Cook: Blair knew Iraq had no WMD

Robin Cook: His account of the war with Iraq is 'dynamite'.

Scotland on Sunday
October 5, 2003
By Jason Allardyce and Brian Brady

Tony Blair privately admitted on the eve of war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not have any useable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, has claimed.

In an explosive allegation which challenges the Prime Minister's honesty and dramatically undermines the case for military action, Cook says Blair told him on March 5 he no longer believed Saddam had WMD ready to fire within 45 minutes.

Cook claims John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, also "assented" that the Iraqi dictator possessed no such weapons and reveals that disagreements over Iraq led to a near mutiny in the cabinet. He reveals that Home Secretary David Blunkett and Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt both voiced misgivings about going to war during cabinet meetings last year.

Cook, who resigned from the cabinet over Blair's support for war, even suggests that the Prime Minister "deliberately crafted a suggestive phrasing" to mislead the public into thinking there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda and that he did not want UN weapons inspectors to succeed.

But it is the suggestion that Blair misled the public about the true extent of Saddam's military threat which will cause the Prime Minister most trouble. The 45-minute claim had been made repeatedly by Blair in arguing the case for war and was key to winning over doubters inside his own government that military action in Iraq was justified to deal with a "real and present danger".

The disclosure will place further pressure on the Prime Minister to hold a judicial inquiry into the legitimacy of war. Backing such an investigation, the SNP's Westminster leader, Alex Salmond, said it was clear that Blair had taken the UK into war in Iraq "under false pretences".

Details of the claims are contained in Point of Departure, Cook's account of his final months in office, which is due out later this month.

Downing Street is deeply concerned that Blair will be further damaged by new doubts over the case he presented for going to war and the government was last night in legal talks with lawyers representing Cook to try to prevent publication of some of his allegations.

In the long-awaited book, Cook claims that during a private meeting with Blair he told the Prime Minister it was clear from a briefing he had from John Scarlett that Saddam had no WMD that could strike at strategic cities. Cook also said Saddam probably did have several thousands of battlefield chemical munitions and asked the Prime Minister if he feared the Iraqi leader could use these against British troops.

Cook writes that Blair replied: "Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use." Cook adds: "There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion. The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of this view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the Prime Minister and both had assented to it."

The claims directly contradict the assertions of the key government dossier last September which asserted that "Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability... which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents".

A senior source close to negotiations over the book said: "No one who reads this [Cook's book] will believe the Prime Minister went to war on anything other than completely bogus grounds. He said one thing and did another."

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman last night confirmed that Cook's proposed book had still not been cleared for publication by the government. She said: "Mr Cook has complied with the ministerial code and has submitted his manuscript to the Cabinet Office for review. It remains with us."

Brian Wilson, a former minister and key Blair ally, dismissed Cook's complaints about the war.

"Robin was totally committed to the policy of sanctions and of course defended it against criticism from very many of the people who he is trying to ally himself to today," said Wilson.

But Cook's revelation that Blunkett and Hewitt as well as himself and former International Development Secretary Clare Short spoke out during cabinet meetings last year underlined that the former Foreign Secretary was not alone among some of Blair's closest colleagues in harbouring serious doubts about war. Cook writes that complaints from Blunkett and others in February 2002 amounted to "the nearest thing I've heard to a mutiny in cabinet".

One Cook ally also defended the ex-minister's actions, saying Cook was prepared to fight his corner and maintain that he had been consistent in his approach to Iraq. The source said: "Robin is quite clear that on Iraq he has been consistent and that it is an area where there is an overriding public interest which he can't ignore. He must be honest about the situation."

But Alex Salmond said: "It is intolerable that a Prime Minister can take the country into war under false pretences - and then dodge proper accountability and scrutiny, in the face of massive public opposition to his policy."

Cook's claims about the existence of WMD in Point of Departure are in line with evidence from Dr David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, which admitted last week that it had not yet found stocks of weapons. Kay said multiple sources had told him that "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons programme after 1991".

He added: "Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new chemical weapons munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections."

Despite Cook's claims, however, the Iraq Survey Group did find several breaches of UN resolutions which supporters of the war believe amounted to a powerful case against Saddam, even if it was not the one on which Blair and Bush finally chose to put most weight.

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