Leaked government papers marked “secret and personal” suggest that the decision to oust Saddam Hussein by force was made in collaboration with America at least a year before the conflict. Blair has always maintained that no decision was taken so far in advance.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said Blair had not been frank over the affair: “If these documents are accurate they provide a devastating insight into the political run-up to war in Iraq. They demonstrate that the government agreed with the Bush administration on regime change in Iraq more than a year before military action was taken.”
The papers also show that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, wrote to Blair months before the conflict, saying that post-war Iraq would pose major problems. “There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything,” said Straw.
Other secret papers gave warnings that Iraq could lapse into an era of coups after Saddam was toppled.
The evidence has emerged on the eve of the Labour conference and shortly before the expected publication of the findings of a CIA-backed team of investigators that has been searching for WMD. The Iraq Survey Group is set to report that no significant quantities of banned weapons have been found.
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It is also expected to that reveal Saddam was violating United Nations sanctions by carrying out research on banned weapons when America and Britain invaded last year and that he could eventually have acquired the capacity to launch a nuclear, chemical or biological attack.
The findings are likely to be seized on by both supporters and critics of the American-led invasion of Iraq.
Crucially for the credibility of Blair and President George W Bush, who is seeking re-election, the inspectors are understood to have unearthed evidence that Iraqi scientists were secretly conducting biological experiments while telling the UN that all such efforts had ceased.
Among the Iraq Survey Group’s discoveries are believed to be: oA nuclear laboratory holding equipment and documentation that indicated work on developing a nuclear weapon. oResearch on a bacterium that mimicked anthrax. oWork on missiles and at least one unmanned aircraft that exceeded the 90-mile range allowed by the UN.