Blair "warned two years ago of Iraq post-war chaos"
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, Sept 18, IRNA -- Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was reported Saturday to have warned Prime Minister Tony Blair of potential post- war problems in Iraq back in 2002. In one letter written more than a year before the invasion, Blair was told that no one had a clear idea of what would follow the invasion, according to the Daily Telegraph. "No one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience," Straw reportedly said. Some experts not working for the government were also said to have predicted before the war that Iraq would descend into chaos, with battle lines drawn along ethnic and religious lines and a guerilla warfare campaign being waged against the coalition. In response to the report, Blair`s office said that it never commented on leaked documents but the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, said if they were accurate, they provide a "devastating insight" into the run-up to the war. "They demonstrate that the government agreed with the Bush administration on regime change in Iraq more than a year before military action was taken," he said. HC/2321/1432
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