Iran Feature: "Britain Rebuffs US Pleas to Use Its Military Bases for Attack" (Hopkins)

Britain has rebuffed US pleas to use military bases in the UK to support the build-up of forces in the Gulf, citing secret legal advice which states that any pre-emptive strike on Iran could be in breach of international law.

US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories.

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Wikileaks Special: How US Kept Banned Cluster Bombs in British Territory

On 6 May 2009, representatives from the State Department and Department of Defense hosted officials from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) "to discuss progress on [Britain's] national legislation implementing the Convention on Cluster Munitions ".

Ostensibly, the British delegation's "primary focus at this meeting was to inform Washington of an accelerated date for the request of the removal of U.S. munitions from UK territory". In fact, the two sides were going to discuss an arrangement to allow the Americans to maintain the storage and transit of cluster bombs in that territory.

The solution? The Foreign Office, led by David Miliband, established "temporary exceptions" for the US to store the bombs on a "case-by-case" basis for specific military operations, such as those in Afghanistan.

And in the May 2009 meeting, there was a neat twist. The Foreign Office delegation had an arrangement to keep the deal with the Americans a secret from the British Parliament....

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