NO, that question is not on everyone's lips not yet, anyway -- but it must be lurking at the back of the minds of many, especially after the latest allegation made by the British Prime Minister's erstwhile Cabinet colleague Clare Short. In a BBC interview on Sunday, June 1, the former International Development Secretary accused Mr Blair of being deceitful to the Cabinet over the Iraq question on at least three occasions.

Short of directly calling the Prime Minister a liar, Ms Short (no pun intended here) accused him of: (1) not being honest about wanting a second United Nations Security Council resolution authorising the war as he had already agreed in "secret" with President Bush at Camp David last September to go to war against Iraq by the following Spring "come what may" and then told the Cabinet that he would try to act as a constraint on the US; (2) misleading the Cabinet over Iraq's weapons capability by claiming that "Iraq was an immediate threat to us in 45 minutes" because it was in a position to launch a biological or chemical attack at such short notice; (3) falsely stating that the French President Jacques Chirac would veto a second UN resolution "under

any circumstances" because a transcript of Mr Chirac's interview -which Ms Short subsequently read -- showed that Mr Blair's claim had no substance.

When asked during Sunday's BBC interview who could be held responsible for misleading the Cabinet, Ms Short said with her customary bluntness, "It (the misinformation) came from our Prime Minister" and added: "We could have done it properly and we could have tried without war, minimising the harm to the people of Iraq." She complained that the Cabinet subcommittee which should have dealt with the war did not meet at all before the outbreak of hostilities and Mr Blair's secrecy over the war had hampered the planning for its aftermath and helped produce the current "chaos and suffering" in Iraq. "It was all done in Tony Blair's study " said Ms Short " The normal

Whitehall systems to make big decisions like this broke down and were very personalised in No. 10." Mr Blair did have a private summit with Mr Bush at Camp David on September 7 last year where, if Ms Short's accusations are true, a detailed war plan might have been agreed upon.

Following this summit, on September 24 the British Government published a dossier on Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass

Destruction (WMD) which included the claim that he had the capability of launching an attack "within 45 minutes". No evidence of any WMD possessed by Saddam Hussein, however, has been unearthed yet and there is growing doubt that such evidence will ever come to light. But Mr Blair continues to insist that the evidence on Saddam's arsenal which will be published in the next US-UK intelligence dossier in the coming weeks will make sceptical people "very, very well satisfied" that he has been right all along.

Meanwhile, the former Foreign Secretary and ex-Commons Leader Robin Cook has also joined ranks with Clare Short by demanding an independent inquiry into the 'government's failure to uncover evidence of WMD. He told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend' programme that "It is beginning to look as if the government has committed a monumental blunder", adding: "In the real world, governments make mistakes, but what they must never do is try to deny and cover up these mistakes.. The government should admit it was wrong and it needs to set up a thorough independent inquiry into how it got it wrong, so we never again send British troops into action on the basis of a mistake."

This latest attack on Mr Blair by two of his former Cabinet col-

leagues is sure to trigger further rebellion among disgruntled Labour MPs. More than 70 of them have issued a signed motion voicing their concern about the absence of evidence of WMD and the results of the latest YouGov poll show that at least 63 per cent of voters feel that they have been misled by the authorities. Britons whose lives have been directly affected by the war are naturally even more deeply concerned. A mother whose Royal Marine son was killed in a helicopter crash near Kuwait at the start of the

war said: "If this turns out to be a lie, then Tony Blair should resign and he should be prosecuted under international law as a war criminal." And she is not the only one with such sentiments.

But at the same time, we must also remember that it was Robin Cook himself who, back in 1998, told the Commons: "There is no room for doubt over the scale of Saddam's chemical or biological capacity, nor over his repeated attempts to conceal it." He was in the government then. What makes him now conclude that the govern-

ment -- which he has left very recently -- is trying to cover up "a monumental blunder'? Besides, simply because no WMD have been discovered so far does not necessarily mean that they never existed. So, for the sake of a balanced point of view, if we accept that such weapons had actually existed, should we not also accept that Saddam Hussein -- for whatever reason -chose not to use them and took care to ensure that none of his WMD ever fell into the hands of the allied troops because that would be handing the

propaganda victory to his enemies.

Thus the real problem for Mr Blair is not being accused of deliberate prevarication by his former colleagues, neither the threat of rebellion from inside his own party. His real problem is that now when he insists that he is convinced Saddam Hussein did possess WMD and that he expects to be able to prove it in the near future, he is probably speaking the truth but no one seems willing to believe him, or even give him the benefit of doubt. Unfortunately, the Iraq war has caused him to lose much of the nation's trust he

once enjoyed.

New legislation to prevent domestic violence

There are nearly 700,000 reported cases of domestic violence in Britain every year. At least three out of every four of the victims happen to be women who are beaten up or physically abused by men. Every week two women on an average lose their lives as a result of domestic violence the perpetrators of which are their present or former husbands or male partners. The legislation currently in place for dealing with such incidents do not seem to be effective enough as a deterrent and so the government is now planning to introduce a system of recording all reported cases in a 'Register of Domestic Violence' which will, in effect, be similar to the Register of Sex Offenders already in force that contains the names and other details of everyone accused and found guilty of serious sexual misdemeanours.

The proposed domestic violence legislation will make it mandatory to record the details of any man sent to prison for six months for beating or physically abusing his wife or partner and these details will remain on the Register for the next seven years. Not only that, a man who is sentenced to two years or more in prison for similar offences will have

his name and other details on the Register for the rest of his life. Once a man's name appears on this Register -- whether for seven years or for his whole lifetime -- he will be required by law to report to the local police once every week, inform the police of any change of address and all relevant details regarding him will be passed on to his GP, the Social Services and Benefit Agencies.

In certain cases, payment of benefits may be suspended or stopped and all existing or prospective employers may be advised to either dismiss the person concerned or take appropriate disciplinary action against him. More serious cases may even lead to social ostracism. If, at any time in the future, the person concerned repents and wants to go back to his former partner, he will have to do so through the police and the initial contact between him and his partner will be arranged under police supervision. The couple will be given the permission to resume living together only after a suitable 'waiting period' determined by the authorities.

The main purpose of this Register of Domestic Violence is to help the police to easily identify the perpetrators and deal with all cases more effectively. As a spokesperson of the Association of Chief Police Officers said: "It is virtually impossi-

ble to stop domestic violence totally. Many men are found guilty and sentenced to prison for such offences, but we have no way of keeping track on them or knowing what they are doing once they are out of prison. For example, a man is sentenced for so many months or years for physically abusing his lover or wife. At the end of his sentence when he comes out of prison and finds that the woman has remarried or is living with a new male partner, there's no way of telling whether he will react violently once more or not. So a record is essential so that we can identify such persons and an arrangement for weekly monitoring is also essential for preventing the recurrence of violence."

The Crown Prosecution Service is expected to issue a directive regarding the new legislation in June or July this year which will be treated as final, and it will contain the provision that the victims of domestic violence, whether men or women, will be given the chance to apply for permanent residentship in Britain even though they have not been able to live together for the minimum mandatory period.