British Court Rejects Iraq Inquiry

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's highest court on Wednesday rejected a call from the mothers of two teenage soldiers killed in Iraq for a public inquiry into the legality of the war.

Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke had argued that an inquiry should be held to judge whether former Prime Minister Tony Blair had acted lawfully in sending troops into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Lawyers for the women had argued that questions still surround the legal advice given to the government as it made a case for war.

The attorney general at the time, Peter Goldsmith, had first advised Blair in a provisional 13-page document in March 2003 that he had doubts about the legality of war. But within 10 days, in a final, single-page statement, Goldsmith gave an unequivocal view that military action was justified under existing United Nations resolutions.

Clarke's son, trooper David Clarke, died in March 2003 in a so-called friendly fire incident near the city of Basra in southern Iraq. Fusilier Gordon Gentle died in June 2004 in a roadside bomb attack on a British convoy in Basra.

Their parents had argued that an inquiry must be carried out, under the terms of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects the ''right to life.''

But a committee of nine Law Lords at the House of Lords, Britain's highest court, ruled against the women on Wednesday. Britain's High Court and Court of Appeal had previously dismissed their claim.

The Law Lords said lawyers had failed to prove that the European convention applied to the case.

''There is no basis for any inquiry into the circumstances of the sad deaths,'' the Lords said in a written ruling.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said there will be an inquiry after all British troops have returned home.

''I think Tony Blair sent our boys to war on a lie,'' Gentle told reporters as the hearing began at the House of Lords. ''He just agreed with (President) George (W.) Bush right away. They didn't even give it a second thought.''

Gentle said after the ruling that she was bitterly disappointed and hoped Brown would take into account the strength of feeling among families of slain troops.

Britain has about 4,000 troops in Iraq, and 176 service personnel have died there since the war began.