Senior Conservative and Labour politicians yesterday accused the British Government of a cover-up after a leaked Ministry of Defence (MoD) report showed that the average accuracy rate of RAF bombing raids in Kosovo was just 40 per cent even though the operation had been described as the RAF's most accurate campaign.
The Shadow Defence Secretary, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, called for an independent inquiry into the Kosovo bombing campaign and accused the government of seeking to "cover up the truth" about the number of bombs successfully hitting their targets.
Mr Duncan Smith said: "In February, the government told the press that the Kosovo campaign was the most accurate bombing ever conducted by the RAF, which was in marked contrast to reports in the media."
The senior Labour backbencher, Mr Tam Dalyell, said the government must have known that the official version of events presented to the media was wrong. "How does anyone defend what happened in terms of deceit? I have been to Kosovo, anyone who has been there will have seen the collateral damage," he said.
The dispute erupted following an investigation by the BBC R4 Today programme and Flight International magazine. Researchers obtained a classified MoD document which was presented to military officials the day after a positive description of the bombing campaign was given to the press in February. The document concluded that only 40 per cent of all bombs hit their targets. Despite the claim that the Kosovo campaign was the RAF's most accurate operation, 30 per cent of all bombs failed to hit their targets and 30 per cent were unaccounted for, raising the prospect that collateral damage was far greater than admitted.
It also emerged that only four of the RAF's 230 unguided 1,000 lb bombs dropped on Kosovo were confirmed as hitting their targets.
Downing Street immediately defended the RAF's record, but appeared to revise the government's earlier claim when it said that "overall" the Kosovo campaign was "one of the most accurate campaigns in the RAF's history."
The Armed Forces Minister, Mr John Spellar, denied the British government had tried to keep the report secret. Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Spellar insisted the figures showing the number of bombs which hit their targets were confirmed hits and did not include bombs which were not observed hitting targets, or landed nearby, which were listed as unaccounted for or as misses.
He said the figures recorded "observable direct hits" by RAF pilots and that sometimes it was difficult to observe bombs hitting their targets when pilots were flying in cloud.
The MoD insisted it had not misrepresented the facts, pointing out that if a bomb missed its target, even by 10 ft, it would be recorded as a miss. "What we are arguing about here is ridiculous," an MoD spokesman told The Irish Times. "It is a circular argument. It is an argument around statistics."
Earlier, the President of Iraq's trade union federation condemned British and US airstrikes south of Baghdad at the weekend.
Speaking at a conference in London to mark the 10th anniversary of UN sanctions against Iraq, Mr Karim Hamza, who is also a member of Iraq's National Assembly, said British and US citizens should not accept the reasons given for the bombing raids. The US authorities said the raids on Samawa, 170 miles south of Iraq, on Friday and Saturday were in response to attacks on allied aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone in southern Iraq and that only two military targets were hit.
But the Iraqi News Agency has disputed the report saying two people were killed and that a warehouse containing food and other material imported under the UN's food-for-oil programme was hit.