Political Staff

THE Foreign Office's handling of the arms-to-Africa affair looked increasingly shambolic last night after its top diplomat was forced to retract his evidence to MPs just hours after opening an embarrassing rift with Mr Robin Cook.

Sir John Kerr, rated as one of Whitehall's sharpest operators, had to rush out a statement admitting he had got it wrong when he suggested Ministers knew in March about the Customs and Excise inquiry into security consultants Sandline International.

In an intense, 90-minute interview by MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Sir John contradicted Mr Cook's version of events by suggesting officials had briefed junior Minister Tony Lloyd ahead of a Commons debate in March about a possible breach of the United Nations arms embargo against Sierra Leone.

If true, the head of the diplomatic service's evidence would have left Mr Cook facing accusations of misleading Parliament. Last week, the Foreign Secretary assured MPs Mr Lloyd was not briefed.

His account of the way his officials had handled early reports that Sandline might have breached the embargo, by shipping 30 tonnes of weapons to Sierra Leone to help restore the country's deposed president, raised fresh doubts about the flow of information between civil servants and Ministers.

Back at the Foreign Office, Sir John consulted the briefing papers before holding urgent meetings with Mr Cook and Mr Lloyd, before sending officials to the Commons armed with a letter of clarification addressed to the committee.

In it he said he had ''checked his memory'' of the papers prepared for Mr Lloyd's use in the March 12 adjournment debate on Sierra Leone. They did not, after all, mention arms shipments or that a report had been passed to Customs and Excise.

To reinforce the point, Mr Lloyd made an unscheduled statement to MPs in which he insisted he had not misled MPs. On March 12, ''I was not then briefed, told,

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advised or in any other way informed either orally or in writing either of alleged arms shipments or of the Customs and Excise investigation.''

The Tories seized on the confusion as further evidence of the ''shambles'' that has gripped the Foreign Office and said it had now slipped out of ministerial control.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said the affair was taking on an ''Alice in Wonderland dimension''.

Sir John struggled during his questioning to avoid answers that might undermine the ongoing Customs and Excise inquiry into the affair.

However, he admitted former Guards officer Lt Col Tim Spicer, the head of Sandline, had regularly briefed diplomats by telephone and had once visited the Foreign Office, although he insisted the contact had been routine and ''low level''.

Sir John strongly rejected any suggestion that officials had approved, condoned or encouraged Sandline to breach the ban on arms sales to Sierra Leone.

Nevertheless, he refused to hand over Foreign Office telegrams that might detail how the affair developed, saying they were necessary for the investigation.

He revealed the Sierra Leone case was one of 60 possible incidents of illegal exports discussed by a secretive inter-departmental committee called the Restricted Enforcement Unit on February 18.

The committee agreeed to refer the matter to Customs and Excise, but Ministers were not told until April 24, when a letter from Sandline complaining about being investigated reached their office.

Sir John, a highly regarded former ambassador to the European Commission, used his evidence session to launch a staunch defence of Mr Cook's tenure at the Foreign Office.

Far from being ''lazy'', he said, Mr Cook was ''a man who gets very, very deep into his brief so I think the slur on him is quite unfair.''