Tony Blair's admission that Britain would have backed the Iraq war even if he knew it did not have weapons of mass destruction sparked outrage Sunday and calls for his prosecution for war crimes.
The former British prime minister, who backed the US-led invasion in 2003, told the BBC he would "still have thought it right to remove" Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region.
Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a "game-changing admission" for the ongoing official inquiry into the war.
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix added: "The war was sold on the WMD, and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of deployment of arguments, as he said, it sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up."
Blair is due to give evidence to the inquiry into the war, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, early next year, and the commentator in the Sunday Telegraph said the investigation's focus must now change.
"Mr Blair's game-changing admission gives them a licence to be tougher and more prosecutorial," he wrote, a call echoed by campaigners at Stop the War Coalition, who urged Chilcot's inquiry to recommend legal action against Blair.
Professor Philippe Sands, a leading international lawyer, said he believed Blair's comments had left him vulnerable to legal proceedings.
"The fact that the policy was fixed by Tony Blair irrespective of the facts on the ground, and irrespective of the legality, will now expose him more rather than less to legal difficulties," Sands told The Sunday Herald.
A lawyer for Saddam Hussein's jailed former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, wrote to Britain's top legal adviser Saturday asking permission to prosecute Blair for war crimes.
In a statement Sunday, Giovanni di Stefano said the former prime minister's comments were an admission that "his aim was regime change. That is without question unlawful and subject to criminal proceedings".
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