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Taxpayers who tried to file returns online in time for a self-assessment deadline

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Taxpayers who tried to file returns online in time for a self-assessment deadline on Tuesday have been thwarted by technical problems with the Inland Revenue website over Christmas. A technical fault on Christmas Eve crashed the Inland Revenue site for most of that afternoon. "Any ship can turn about in an instant."Despite the fact that the intercept supports the official position, a Foreign Office official said that Professor Freedman had faced deep opposition within Whitehall to the decision to publish it: "It has been a long haul, but we are confident that it will be published next year. You have got to remember that the Falklands was only 20 years ago, so a lot of the operational stuff is still sensitive.''. Last night Sir John said he stood by the decision to sink the ship. "I remain astonished to this day that anyone should consider the momentary compass bearing of the Belgrano's passage to be of any consequence whatever," he said.

"I will read the full account with interest."Sir John Nott, the Defence Secretary at the time, hinted at the existence of the intercept in his recently published memoirs. Senior ministers were "aware" that the ship was being organised in a "pincer movement'' at the time of the attack. "I find it extremely odd that this has popped up now after all these years when they could have easily produced it at the end of the war," he said. It is unusual for such raw intelligence material to be published.The official history will also contain an account of a near-mutiny by members of the special forces. The commander of the SAS "B" unit refused an order to carry out a search-and-destroy operation of missile bases on the Argentinian mainland because, he claimed, it amounted to a "suicide mission".Tony Blair commissioned Professor Freedman, director of war studies at King's College London, to write the official account in July 1997.

The publication has been repeatedly delayed by rows over what can be included. Intelligence chiefs have now relented on the question of whether the key intercept could be made public. Officials at GCHQ were said to be worried that doing so could set a precedent and give away operational secrets.Officials and ministers have always insisted that, far from heading home, the Belgrano was sailing west to a point outside the exclusion zone from which it was to attack.Earlier this year the ship's captain, Hector Bonzo, admitted that the Belgrano's decision to sail away from the Task Force on the morning of 2 May was only a temporary manoeuvre."Our mission ... wasn't just to cruise around on patrol but to attack,'' Captain Bonzo said in a television interview in May. "When they gave us the authorisation to use our weapons, if necessary, we had to be prepared to attack Our people were completely trained. I would say we were anxious to pull the trigger.''In 1994 the Argentine government dropped its claim that the sinking of the Belgrano was a war crime, its defence ministry conceding that it was "a legal act of war''.Last night Mr Dalyell insisted that questions still remained unanswered about the sinking of the Belgrano. Signals intelligence intercepted by GCHQ, the security services' eavesdropping centre at Cheltenham, the day before Conqueror fired its torpedoes at the Belgrano, showed that the warship was under orders to attack.

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