SECRET INTELLIGENCE was received by Britain in the days before the Iraq invasion was launched in 2003, indicating Saddam Hussein had destroyed chemical weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq inquiry was told yesterday.
Sir William Ehrman, a senior foreign office figure, said: “We were getting, in the very final days before military action, some intelligence on chemical and biological weapons – that it was dismantled and that Iraq might not have the munitions to deliver it.”
The disclosure on the second day of the inquiry will strengthen the belief of those who have argued the Americans and British had no legal grounds to invade.
Little about Iraq’s weaponry was learnt after weapons inspectors were ejected from Iraq in 1998, while briefings between 2000 and 2002 to then foreign secretary Jack Straw were “patchy”, “poor” or “limited”, said Sir William. However, new intelligence suggesting chemical and biological weapons were being produced arrived in late August and September 2002, but the foreign office never believed Saddam could have used them in long-distance missiles.
“On March 10th, we got a report saying that the chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their reassembly and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents.”
Asked why the intelligence did not provoke a last-minute rethink, Sir William said: “There was contradictory intelligence, so I don’t think it invalidated the point about what weapons he had. It was more about their use. Even if they were disassembled still existed.”
Meanwhile, the inquiry was told the British knew while there had been some minor contact between Iraq and al-Qaeda in the mid-1990s, “‘no serious collaboration” had taken place.
Questioned about the claim Saddam could fire rockets within 45 minutes, Tim Dowse, the foreign office’s then-head of counter-proliferation, said he had not placed “particular significance” on it when it was used in a pre-war British dossier. He said he assumed it referred to battlefield use of chemical weapons, rather than long-distance strikes: “It certainly took on a rather iconic status that I don’t think that those of us who saw the initial report really gave .” Iraq was not “top of the list” when he became head of counter-proliferation in 2001, he said: “I think in terms of my concerns in coming into the job in 2001, we would put it behind Libya and Iran.”
After the invasion, international weapons inspectors working for the Iraq Survey Group discovered that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stockpile in 1991, finding only a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions.
The inquiry headed by Sir John Chilcot will take up to a year. Former British prime minister Tony Blair will be called. Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the US, will appear today. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has complained Gordon Brown has given government departments wide-sweeping powers to stop the inquiry from publishing confidential papers.