Did Gordon Brown lie to Parliament?

Read this and wonder whether Gordon Brown has been caught lieing.

"An intelligence source said: "The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide 'mentoring' for the Taliban."

The disclosure comes only a fortnight after the Prime Minister told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

Opposition leaders said that Mr Brown had "some explaining to do".

The Government was apparently prepared to admit that the talks had taken place but Mr Brown was thought to have "bottled out" just before Prime Minister's Questions on Dec 12, when he made his denial instead.

It is thought that the Americans were extremely unhappy with the news becoming public that an ally was negotiating with terrorists who supported the September 11 attackers...

"These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms," an intelligence source said. "The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban."

The Prime Minister had denied reports of talks with the Taliban under questioning from David Cameron, the Tory leader, in Parliament.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary said: "If this turns out to be untrue the Prime Minister will have some explaining to do to the British public.""


On 12 May, Gordon Brown said in his opening remarks "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating its leadership. I make it clear that we will not enter into any negotiations with these people." David Cameron asked Gordon Brown "may I ask the Prime Minister about the reports in today’s newspapers? Press headlines say clearly that the Government plan to talk to the Taliban, but the Prime Minister said in his statement that “we will not” talk to “these people”. Does that not demonstrate once again the error of briefing the press in advance of making statements in this House? But is it not more serious than that? These appear to be completely conflicting messages, and they really could undermine our forces in what they are doing. In his reply, can the Prime Minister clear this up and tell us what he will do to investigate how this took place?"

Gordon Brown replied "Let me repeat what I said in my statement—that our aim is to isolate and eradicate the Taliban insurgency and to isolate the leadership. We are not negotiating with the leadership and we do not propose to do so."


Was he telling the truth?