Blair is off the hook, even if Pinochet isn't

The Government can take no credit at all over the decision to allow General Pinochet to face extradition charges, says DAVID ROBERTSON

WHILE the Law Lords were hearing his appeal, an anti-Pinochet demonstration was going on outside. Demonstrations outside Parliament are forbidden while it is in session. The police did nothing about the demonstration.

This symbolises the system's deep ambiguity about the entire issue. The demonstrators themselves seemed utterly convinced that the British judicial system, which they admire, would do the right thing. Well, from their point of view, they were right, though they must be surprised that it wasn't an easier, more automatic, decision. Clearly, from their 3-2 majority decision the Law Lords did not find it easy to overturn the Lord Chief Justice. But now we know. The doctrine of immunity for executive Heads of State was short- lived - we must hope not too much damage was done to our reputation that it was ever even considered. No one can pretend this is an area where there is settled law. The judges made up the law to get the result they thought was right or politically expedient. As it happens, the Law Lords' ideas of expediency clash with those of the Lord Chief Justice. The truth is that this ambivalence was everywhere. On the Pinochet issue the entire British political system has been speaking out, as ever, with the clearest and most passionate indecision. The Government itself was clearly wrong-footed, and stumbled throughout. It need not have been caught this way had the Foreign Office done its job, which is, in large part, to spare the country embarrassment. VERY simply, why was Pinochet here at all? (Actually part of the answer to that is alarmingly simple - Pinochet was here to negotiate arms deals with Chile.) Apparently, he was a great admirer of Britain - presumably he no longer is. It is now clear Britain does not reciprocate these feelings. Even if it never occurred to the Foreign Office that Pinochet might be in danger during his trips here, they could, and they really should, have gently told him that a country boasting a new ethical foreign policy wasn't a suitable destination. Furthermore the Foreign Office should have considered Pinochet to be in danger. This is not the first time legal efforts have been made in this country to have him prosecuted. The FO itself appears to have been surprised by the Lord Chief Justice's decision, because it had advised the Met, when the arrest warrant came through, that he did not have the immunity Lord Bingham subsequently and briefly perceived. There are those who suspect a plot, a deliberate luring of Pinochet into a trap. I would love to believe it - it is at least preferable to the simpler and almost certain truth that the Foreign Office is, as ever, both incompetent and, actually, not very exercised by dictators. Nor does the Diplomatic Service, as opposed to its political "masters", actually believe in ethics anyway - realpolitik has always been its professional creed. But if, because of that incompetence, the Government was wrong- footed ini-tially,it managed characteristically to exacerbate its problems, and to further the system's ambivalence, by the increasingly common sending of contradictory signals. At least three different messages were sent. On the one hand has been the safe, and indeed quite proper, hiding behind due process - it was all for the courts. But the Home Office, or sources very close to it, then tried to soften up public opinion by talking of taking a humane approach to an old and ill man. Well, it missed the boat on that. The Home Secretary did have the power under the Extradition Act 1989 to cancel a provisional arrest warrant, but there is absolutely no politically plausible way he can do so now. As soon as the case went to Lord Bingham, the Government became the prisoner of the judicial system. We'll never really know which judgment it preferred. But that, in part, is because the Government most certainly did not speak with one mind. The one quite clear signal anyone in the Government gave was also the most clearly improper. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was utterly out of line to talk about how much he wanted Pinochet extradited. Anyone else doing something like that would have been slapped down hard. Indeed until a few months ago it was one of Mr Mandelson's main jobs to do that sort of slapping. How much of Mandelson's outburst was indiscretion, as opposed to his more usual cold and calculated politics, is a matter of some considerable interest. This Government, after all, is always looking for that chance at cost-free radicalism. What could be better than a symbol like this high principle and moral outrage, coupled with the defence that it is all a matter for the courts? Does it come down to a rivalry between the political heads of the DTI and the Foreign Office for radical street cred? After the Scott Report the DTI's own record on being nice to dictators is something it might very well want to

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