British Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for attacking Iraq has been dealt a new blow with the release of once-secret evidence from a former British diplomat who dismissed the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Carne Ross, who was responsible for handling Britain's Iraq policy at the United Nations from 1998 to 2002, accused the British government of overstating the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's regime to support the invasion.
"During my posting, at no time did HMG [her majesty's government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests," Mr Ross wrote in evidence submitted to the Butler inquiry in June 2004.
"It was the commonly held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained." Mr Ross said when the United States raised the topic of regime change.
He and others would argue against such a move, "primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos", he said in written testimony given to an inquiry into the run-up to the March 2003 conflict.
"With the exception of some unaccounted-for Scud missiles, there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW [chemical weapons], BW [biological weapons] or nuclear material," the official said.
Mr Ross, who left his post in June 2002, also said he had asked colleagues at the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence about the threat assessment in the run-up to the US-led invasion.
"None told me that any new evidence had emerged to change our assessment; what had changed was the government's determination to present available evidence in a different light," Mr Ross said.
He said he talked about this with government weapons expert David Kelly, who committed suicide in 2003 after being named as the source for a BBC story saying the case for the Iraq war had been exaggerated.
He also said Britain failed to crack down on Iraq when it was in breach of UN sanctions due to "inertia" in the Foreign Office and "the inattention of key ministers". Such a move would have provided a real alternative to war, he added.
The testimony had been kept secret because Mr Ross said he feared he might face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.
But the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs published the evidence after seeking assurances from the Foreign Office, according to London's Independentnewspaper.
Lord Butler's report, released in July 2004, absolved the prime minister of distorting intelligence but contradicted claims Iraq's banned weapons were ready for use and showed that vital caveats were dropped from the spies' assessments.