Inquiry hears Iraq no threat to UK before invasion
Updated
An inquiry in London has heard that Britain's Foreign Office told former Prime Minister, Tony Blair ten days before Britain invaded Iraq, that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled.
A new intelligence report has emerged on day two of the Iraq Inquiry which spells out how Britain's international security chiefs considered Iraq less of a threat than three other rogue states.
Presenter: Emma Alberici
Speakers: Sir William Ehrman, Foreign Office Head of International Security; Tim Dowse, head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office from 2001 to 2003; Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the Iraq inquiry's five panel members
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EMMA ALBERICI: The Chilcot inquiry has now heard two days of evidence from the most senior Foreign Office officials who received and analysed intelligence on Iraq for two years before the war and in the year after the invasion.
Overnight the head of international security in that office Sir William Ehrman confirmed that Britain had never found any evidence to substantiate claims coming from the White House that Saddam Hussein had a link to Al Qaeda.
WILLIAM EHRMAN: Our view was that there was no evidence to suggest collaboration between, serious collaboration of any sort between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.
EMMA ALBERICI: Tim Dowse was the man responsible for counter-proliferation, he too was adamant that no relationship was ever established.
TIM DOWSE: After 9/11 we concluded that the Iraqi's had actually stepped further back, that they were, that they didn't want to be associated with Al Qaeda.
EMMA ALBERICI: The UK's Foreign Office did not believe that Iraq had nuclear missiles. They were convinced that the international atomic energy agency had successfully dismantled Saddam Hussein's capabilities.
Sir William Ehrman told the inquiry that in the ten days before military action he had received intelligence that debunked the notion that Iraq was an immediate threat.
WILLIAM EHRMAN: We did at the very end, I think on the 10th of March get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly, and there was also suggestion that Iraq might lack war heads capable of the effective dispersal of agents.
EMMA ALBERICI: Not only were there no nuclear or chemical weapons considered dangerous, the UK's intelligence community ranked Iraq fourth on a list of states posing the greatest risk to Britain's national security - Iran, North Korea and Libya were all thought to be bigger threats.
The officials said that the government ministers were warned before the invasion and throughout the war that there were huge gaps in the UK's intelligence about Iraq's weapons program.
Tim Dowse was asked this question by Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the Iraq inquiry's five panel members.
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Would you regard the prime minister's statement in December 2003 that the Iraq survey group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, as corresponding to the advice you were giving to ministers?
TIM DOWSE: I did not advise him to use those words.
EMMA ALBERICI: The issue of Iraq's ability to produce or use weapons of mass destruction is central to the inquiry which must ultimately decide whether Tony Blair misled the Parliament over the reasons for going to war in 2003.
The next hearing will focus on the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush and whether Britain went to war just to please Washington.
