The Blair government would have liked to have gone down the diplomatic route to disarm Saddam Hussein but became a "prisoner" of a US policy heading towards war, the former head of the UN weapons inspectors told the Iraq inquiry today . Both Britain and the US should have realised "their sources were poor" when his inspectors found nothing in Iraq, Hans Blix said. It should have set alarm bells ringing in London and Washington when the inspectors repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence that Saddam still had active WMD programmes, he told the Chilcot inquiry.

Blix said it was his "firm view" that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, adding: "I think the vast majority of international lawyers feel that way." Lord Goldsmith, Tony Blair's attorney general, had "wriggled" before he finally provided the legal authority for British troops to invade, Blix said. "He was not quite sure it would have stood an international tribunal. Nevertheless, he gave the green light to it."

Directing his criticism at the US rather than Britain, Blix told the inquiry: "The UK was wedded to the UN route but eventually became prisoner of the American train." He described the Bush administration of being "high on military" in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001. "They felt that they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable," Blix told the inquiry. Blix called claims by Condoleezza Rice, the then US secretary of state, that Washington's policy was one of trying to uphold the authority of the UN security council as "totally absurd". He described the close relationship between previous UN weapons inspectors and US and UK intelligence agencies as "scandalous". So, too, he said, were US and UK intelligence claims, based on a forged document, that Iraq was trying to get its hands on uranium oxide for its alleged nuclear weapons programme.

Guardian.co.uk

Quote:"The UK was wedded to the UN route but eventually became prisoner of the American train."

Oh I think most of us have known that for a long time.

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