Menzies Campbell: Let the weapons inspectors take as long as they need

Rarely has a day in the calendar been subject to such contradictory predictions as Monday 27 January. Yesterday, we were told variously, was to be "high noon" or "take note"; a "staging post" or a "trigger for war". In the end, yesterday proved to be none of these. The head of the United Nations weapons inspection team, Dr Hans Blix, produced a report from which everyone could take something, but no one could take complete satisfaction.

Dr Blix has told the Security Council that the inspectors have not yet found any evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, that they are still getting some co-operation, but not enough, from the Iraqi regime and that they want more time. This report places severe obligations on Saddam Hussein, which he will ignore at his peril. But it also places obligations on Britain and the other members of the Security Council.

How can a government such as ours, committed to the integrity of the United Nations, refuse to agree to more time, particularly when the secretary general, Kofi Annan, yesterday publicly argued for more time and for a unified multilateral approach from the Security Council? Unilateral decisions followed by unilateral military action would severely damage Kofi Annan and the UN.

It has been a mantra of the British Government that the UN must be part of the solution and not part of the problem. If a material breach of resolution 1441 is found, it is argued, and no military action follows, the UN will be fatally undermined. But what would be more likely to undermine its authority than permanent members of the Security Council independently determining that the UN's own processes should be ignored and its secretary general disregarded?

Do not permanent members of the Security Council have a special responsibility to it? Does not the power to exercise the veto imply a higher degree of commitment to the institution? Does no one in the British Government understand the fallacy in saying that we want to work through the UN so long as the UN does what we want?

But, if not the British Government, most certainly the British people do. When Margaret Thatcher sent troops to recapture the Falklands, when John Major put nearly 40,000 of our forces in the desert to help to expel Iraq from Kuwait, and when Mr Blair himself committed servicemen and women to protect the peoples of Sierra Leone and of Kosovo, they all three knew that they had the support of large majorities in Parliament and the country.

Not so now in relation to Iraq. If the inspectors want more time and are denied, and justification for military action is not based on a fresh mandate, does anyone believe that the same historical levels of support will be forthcoming?

No country can ever rule out in all circumstance the use of military force if it is necessary to protect its citizens. But to be consistent with international law, such force can only be used when all other political and diplomatic alternatives have been exhausted. If the secretary general of the United Nations Kofi Annan maintains his most recently expressed view that war is not justified, can Britain simply gainsay that? If the inspectors request more time and urge that their work should take its natural course, could Whitehall offer, say, a couple of weeks and legitimately believe that it had fulfilled its moral and legal obligations?

Throughout the month of August last year, the Government failed to make its case. The increasing reservations of the British public date from then. These reservations apply to supporters of all parties and of none. They are reflected in the House of Commons in all parties, including the Tories. Thoughtful ex-Cabinet ministers such as Douglas Hogg and Kenneth Clarke publicly voice anxieties, and even the latter, no knee-jerk anti-American, feels constrained to observe that the UK must avoid acting like the 51st State.

The Prime Minister's strategy is said by his supporters to be to give maximum support to the Bush administration in public in order to exercise maximum influence in private. Such a strategy is plausible, but to be persuasive of public opinion requires to have demonstrable results.

Nor has anyone yet provided credible answers to the penetrating questions posed by John Major last summer: What is the exit strategy? How long would British troops be required to be in Iraq; and who would replace Saddam Hussein? Should not any decision to use military action take account not just of legality and utility, but of the consequences of such action?

It is to James Maxton, the firebrand Independent Labour MP of the 1930s, of whom Gordon Brown, coincidentally, has written a compelling biography, that the political maxim "If you can't ride both horses at once you should not be in the bloody circus" is attributed. But there must be a limit even to this Prime Minister's political agility.

The ambiguity in the British position derives from the inconsistency of objectives between Washington and London. The latter may wish for disarmament, but the former will not settle for less than regime change. To Washington, 27 January was irrelevant. For the future course of British politics it may well be seminal.

The author is the Liberal Democrat spokesman for foreign affairs