MINISTERS in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence were sent briefing papers detailing
Sandline International's interests in Sierra Leone on several occasions before they were alerted to the Customs and Excise inquiry into an illegal arms shipment, it emerged last night.
The information was assessed by the Cabinet's Joint Intelligence Committee, which prepares the highly secretive weekly security briefing for the Prime Minister's office and other senior Ministers, it has emerged.
However a senior Minister told the Herald last night that although they were briefed on the private security company's links with the deposed government of President Kabbah, they were not told about a possible breach of the United Nations arms embargo and the launch of a Customs inquiry until April 24, the date of the explosive letter from Sandline to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
''We received a number of papers on several occasions about Sandline and Sierra Leone. But the first we knew about the arms shipment and the inquiry was when the Sandline letter reached us,'' the Minister said. The latest revelations in the increasingly complex affair, which centres on whether Ministers were properly briefed by their civil servants, came just hours after Tony Blair sought to draw increasingly hostile attention from Mr Cook by praising the outcome of the Sandline-led counter coup which restored Sierra Leone's recognised government.
Foreign Office sources last night insisted the affair was more ''cock up than conspiracy'' and complained that the secretive nature of the Customs and Excise investigation meant there is no way for Mr Cook to know when he will be able to launch the independent inquiry he has promised to identify why and how Ministers were kept in the dark.
Yesterday Mr Blair was accused of undermining the criminal investigation into the arms-to-Africa affair after he launched a strong defence of the diplomats involved.
Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs accused the Prime Minister of trying to divert attention from his embattled Foreign Secretary by justifying the decision to restore Sierra Leone's toppled government.
Mr Blair launched his offensive after a week of headlines about British collaboration with international mercenaries that has undermined Robin Cook's claim to lead an ''ethical'' foreign policy.
He said Foreign Office officials were right to help restore a democratically elected regime, but his justification immediately drew warnings that it could prejudice the Customs and Excise inquiry into a British arms shipment to Sierra Leone which appeared to violate a United Nations arms embargo.
The Prime Minister took Westminster by surprise by heaping praise on the Mr Peter Penfold, the British High Commissioner who allegedly urged President Kabbah to seek the assistance of ''military consultants'' Sandline International, saying he had done a ''superb job''.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell seized on what appeared to be an attempt to justify military intervention by accusing Ministers of letting ''the end justify the means''.
Mr Blair, on a visit to a west London college, was careful to stress that it would be wrong for officials to have ''deliberately'' broken the UN arms embargo, a choice of words seen at Westminster as suggesting the Government might try to explain the shipment away as ''accidental''.
He went on to pay tribute to Mr Penfold, saying he did ''a superb job last year in dealing with the consequences of the military coup and working closely with the regime of President Kabbah. That is the background and people can see that a lot of the hoo-ha is overblown.''
Words that haunt Page 11
Paying the price Page 17
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