On the eve of the UN Security Council Conference on the Iraq issue, British Prime Minister Tony Blair published on an official website a report on Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and its violation of the UN resolutions. Besides publishing this report on the official website, the British government transmitted this report as an official document to its representative stationed in the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, and claimed that the contents of this document originated from "information material" and was an "information updating" of the intelligence about Iraq. This report made by Britain was exactly what Washington authorities wanted who were bent on using force against Iraq, because it adds evidence for possible war to be launched by the United States against Iraq. Little wonder that Mr. Powell was delighted at seeing the "hunters", he not only praised the British document as "exceedingly good", but also regarded it as an evidence for accusing Iraq, and so quoting the report paragraph by paragraph.

In fact, this British official document is not from the right source. A few days ago, someone accused that the British government's report on Iraq's alleged illegal possession of arms of mass destruction was work of plagiarism. According to a recent report from a foreign news agency, Scholar Maras with the Monterrey Anti-nuclear Proliferation Research Center, California, USA on February 7 told the San Francisco Chronicle that the British government plagiarized and distorted his report concerning Iraq's plan for illegal weapon development, furthermore, the British government did not raise any demand for use of his work. Maras was astonished by this and he charged that certain paragraphs of related British government document were "very close to" his report and made substantive revisions in some places of his report and even distorted and exaggerated certain data therein. He confessed to the British BBC that the "military information" he collected about Iraq was copied from a 1997 British military reading and written into an article and was then published in the Mid-east International Review. Of the 19-page report on "Saddam's Crimes" submitted by Britain to the Security Council, 10 pages were "stolen" from Maras!

The exposure of the plagiarism scandal has totally discredited British officials. The embarrassed British government was compelled to show up to apologize, but at the same time it insisted that this did not interfere with British "central idea" about the Iraq issue. British officials who are against Tony Blair's policy toward Iraq therefore uttered endless complaints, denouncing that the government "covered things up" on the Iraq issue, and even used the mixed, deceptive hotchpotch to deceive and mislead public opinion, in an attempt to cajole the parliament and the public into supporting the government's intransigent stand on the Iraq issue.

On the current international stage, the United States and Britain echo each other and follow each other step by step. Since they can resort to plagiarism in the report they submitted to the Security Council, what else they cannot do by playing trickery? People have every reason to ask: How many lies have the US and British high officials told in previous major international events?

(People’s Daily February 11, 2003)