LONDON, March 24 (Xinhuanet) -- The British government was urged by the opposition parties on Thursday to explain why its top legal adviser apparently changed his mind over the legality of the Iraq war that broke out on March 20, 2003.

    The demand came after the British Channel 4 News reported Wednesday evening that some lines from a resignation letter by former government legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst showed Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, chief law officer of the government, changed his mind over the legality of the war between March 7 and March 18, 2003, days before the US-led war joined by Britain.

    Some critics suspected that the few lines suggest Goldsmith shifted stance due to political pressure.

    Goldsmith was fully entitled to change his mind, but "the difficulty is that change of mind is against the backdrop of the prime minister (Tony Blair) having massaged the truth when he appeared before Parliament (to win the case for the Iraq war)," major opposition Conservative Party shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve told the BBC.

    A full explanation was needed, as well as the publication of Lord Goldsmith's written advice, the BBC quoted second largest opposition Liberal Democratic Party foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campell as reporting.

    Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from Blair's Labor cabinet days before the Iraq war to protest the government'sIraq policy, urged government ministers to clear up the "running nose" and suggested lawmakers might not have voted for the Iraq war had they known of Wilmshurst's concerns.

    "It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that what changed...was the discovery that we were not going to get the second resolution," Cook told the BBC. "The attorney general is entitled to change his view but I think we now need to know why he changed his view. We need an explanation."

    Wilmshurst, who is currently head of the International Law Program at the British think tank Royal Institute of InternationalAffairs, resigned as deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office onthe eve of the invasion because she did not believe military action in Iraq was legal.

    A censored version of her resignation letter, which argued the Iraq war amounted to a "crime of aggression," has been obtained under freedom of information laws by the BBC news website and other new organizations.

    However, a few lines was blanked out by the Foreign Office. And Channel 4 News, without giving a source for its information, published the missing section that suggested Goldsmith originally believed the war was illegal without a new UN resolution.

    On the Channel 4 News report, Wilmshurst said: "I have nothing to add to my statement of Feb. 27, 2004."

    "I left my job as a deputy legal adviser in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office because I did not agree that the use of force against Iraq was lawful, and in all the circumstances I did not want to continue as a legal adviser," Wilmshurst said in her statement. Enditem