Delay in Britain’s Iraq war investigation angers PM Cameron
Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday he was becoming increasingly concerned with Britain’s heavily delayed investigation into the country’s role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and called for the conclusions to urgently be published.
The report, expected to shed light on how then Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to get involved in a war which many Britons opposed as well as how it was conducted, was announced in 2009 and was initially expected to take just a year.
Nearly six years later, John Chilcot, the head of the inquiry, says he can’t say when it will be completed because of its complexity and the need to obtain responses from people criticised in the report.
Cameron, in a letter to Chilcot, said he was disappointed.
“Since the establishment of the Inquiry nearly six years ago, the British public, in particular those who served in Iraq or lost loved ones in the conflict, have been awaiting the results,” he wrote.
“We are fast losing patience.”
Finance minister George Osborne also weighed in, using a question and answer session in parliament to urge those conducting the inquiry to ‘get on with it’.
