Iraq whistleblower to talk at University of Wolverhampton

Iraq whistleblower to talk at Uni

A former British diplomat and whistleblower on the Iraq war is to visit the University of Wolverhampton to talk about his new book.

Carne Ross spent 15 years at the British Foreign Office and was in charge of the Iraq dossier in Britain’s UN delegation in the run-up to the Iraq war.

It was his job to prepare the evidence on weapons of mass destruction and to negotiate resolutions on sanctions. But, as his new book reveals, the more he worked on the issue the more he realised that Washington and London were engaged in what he describes as a “gross exaggeration of what we knew”.

In September 2004, the 38-year-old highly-rated diplomat resigned, giving up everything - income, power, status.

Now he has published a book about his experiences, entitled Independent Diplomat, and is to make a rare public appearance at the University of Wolverhampton on Tuesday, November 20.

Event organiser and Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Terrorism, Dr George Kassimeris, said: “In his fascinating new book, Ross writes that as he watched the move to war, he drafted many resignation letters but did not send them. But the suicide of David Kelly - a British weapons inspector and a colleague and friend of Ross’s - appalled and enraged him. In the summer of 2004 Ross gave a scathing testimony to Britain’s “Butler Inquiry” into the use of intelligence on Iraq’s WMD. This evidence was, in effect, his letter of resignation.

 
“In a rare public appearance, Ross will be talking at the University of Wolverhampton about life in the Foreign Office, Iraq and whistleblowing.”

The talk is open to the public and will take place in MC228, in the Millennium City Building at the Wolverhampton City Campus, from 1pm to 2pm on Tuesday, November 20.

Notes 

 
Carne Ross served in the British Foreign Office for more than fifteen years. Between 1997 and 1998, he was speechwriter to the British Foreign Secretary. He then spent four and a half years in the UK delegation on the UN Security Council, where he was the UK delegation's Middle East expert, holding the rank of First Secretary, and later served as Strategy Coordinator for the UN in Kosovo (UNMIK), advising the Secretary-General's Special Representative on diplomatic and political tactics. In 2005, after founding Independent Diplomat, he was named by Britain's Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust as one of its seven “visionaries for a just and peaceful world.”