surprise me not

Blair reportedly persuaded Bush not to bomb Al-Jazeera
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 Posted at 10:33 AM EST Associated Press

London — A British civil servant has been charged under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly leaking a government memo that, according to a newspaper report Tuesday, suggests that Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President George W. Bush not to bomb the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.

According to the Daily Mirror, Mr. Bush spoke of targeting Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha when he met Mr. Blair at the White House on April 16 last year. The U.S. government has regularly accused Al-Jazeera of being a mouthpiece for anti-U.S. sentiments.

Mr. Blair's Downing Street office would not comment on the report.

In Qatar, Al-Jazeera said it was aware of the report but did not wish to comment immediately.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh is accused of passing the memo to Leo O'Connor, who formerly worked for former British MP Tony Clarke. Both Mr. Keogh and Mr. O'Connor are scheduled to appear at London's Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr. Keogh was charged with an offence under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act relating to “a damaging disclosure” by a servant of the Crown of information relating to international relations or information obtained from a state other than the United Kingdom.

Mr. O'Connor was charged under section 5, which relates to receiving and disclosing illegally disclosed information.

According to the newspaper, Mr. Clarke returned the memo to Mr. Blair's office. Mr. Clarke could not immediately be contacted for comment on Tuesday.

Critics jumped on the report, saying it raised questions about U.S. military attacks on Al-Jazeera offices in Afghanistan and Iraq that Washington said were accidental, as well as on other reportedly accidental U.S. attacks on journalists in Iraq.

In April 2003, an Al-Jazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a U.S. bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a U.S. State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike was a mistake.

In November 2002, Al-Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a U.S. missile. None of the staff was at the office at the time. U.S. officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Al-Jazeera's office.

Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister in Mr. Blair's government, called for the document to be made public.

“I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion,” he said. “If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes, and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, said that, if true, the memo was worrying.

“If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration as events in Iraq began to spiral out of control,” he said. “On this occasion, the Prime Minister may have been successful in averting political disaster, but it shows how dangerous his relationship with President Bush has been.”