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Blair confirmed Iraq had no usable WMD before war, says Cook

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, July 12, IRNA -- Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has 
questioned the veracity of Tony Blair`s justification for invading 
Iraq by disclosing that the Prime Minister confirmed Saddam Hussein 
had no useable weapons of mass destruction before the war. 
"The exchange is recorded in my diary on March 5, 2003," Cook 
said about his meeting with Blair, in which he was said to have 
given the same reply as the chairman of the Joint Intelligence 
Committee (JIC) John Scarlett a few weeks earlier. 
In February last year, he said that Scarlett "readily agreed" to 
his conclusion that Saddam had "no long-range weapons of mass 
destruction but may have battlefield chemical weapons." 
The JIC chief also told him that he believed Saddam had taken 
apart the shells and dispersed them to evade detection by UN 
inspectors and that was why the UK government thought they would not 
be used against British troops on the battlefield. 
In his forthcoming book `Point of Departure,` Cook takes issue 
with Blair`s denial in parliament in January that he knew before the 
war that the government`s discredited claim that Iraq could use 
weapons within 45-minutes referred only to battlefield munitions. 
He said he was "mystified to hear him say he had never understood 
that the intelligence agencies did not believe Saddam had long-range 
weapons of mass destruction." 
"I have been told that Tony Blair does not recall me telling him 
that Saddam had no long-range weapons. But did nobody else tell 
him?" Cook asked, according to extracts of his book published in the 
Guardian newspaper Monday. 
He did not actually accuse the Prime Minister of lying but 
referred to the prime minister`s regular meetings before the war 
with the chief of defence staff, who, he said, would certainly have 
known the weapons the enemy was believed to possess. 
"Why did Tony Blair himself never ask John Scarlett whether he 
was talking about long-range or battlefield weapons?" asked Cook, 
who resigned from his second government post as House of Commons 
leader on the eve of the Iraq war. 
"Given that the prime minister was justifying war to the nation 
on the grounds that Saddam was a serious threat to British interests, 
he showed a surprising lack of curiosity as to what that threat 
actually was," he said. 
In his resignation speech in parliament in March 2003, Cook cited 
that he did not believe Iraq had any usable WMD as a reason for his 
departure from the government. 
In extracts from his book, he suggested that the difference in 
what the Prime Minister said he believed and the intelligence 
agencies assessments "represent the most extraordinary failure of 
communication in the history of the British intelligence agencies." 
His published comments follow last week`s damning report by the 
US Senate on the intelligence failures over Iraq and come ahead of 
the publication of the UK`s own inquiry, led by former cabinet 
secretary Lord Butler, on Wednesday. 
Last Saturday, former JIC chief Dame Pauline Neville-Jones 
suggested that Blair must take responsibility for any intelligence 
failings identified in the Butler Report. 
HC/2321/1432