BRITAIN: Two former British government ministers said yesterday they were told by MI6 in the run-up to the war with Iraq that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction did not pose any immediate threat.
Former foreign secretary Mr Robin Cook and ex-international development secretary Ms Clare Short both resigned because of the war.
At the opening session of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee inquiry into the use of intelligence in the Iraq conflict, both ex-ministers said they believed the threat from Iraqi weapons had been "exaggerated".
Ms Short repeated her accusation that the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, had "pre-committed" Britain to war, even though he had claimed to be working for a resolution to the crisis through the United Nations.
She said that she believed Mr Blair must have convinced himself that he was engaged in an "honourable deception" because he thought that it was right for Britain to back the United States over military action.
Mr Cook stopped short of accusing Downing Street of deliberate deception, but he said there had been a "burning fixation" with Iraqi weapons and that intelligence had been used selectively to support a policy which had already been decided.
However the most damaging evidence for Downing Street was the disclosure by the two ex-ministers that intelligence briefings by MI6 before the war had made clear that there was no imminent threat from Iraqi chemical or biological weapons.
Mr Cook stopped receiving regular intelligence briefings after he left the Foreign Office in 2001 to become leader of the Commons.
But he, along with the rest of the cabinet, had been briefed individually by MI6 - more properly known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - in the run-up to war.
His resignation speech - when he said Iraq probably had no weapons of mass destruction in terms of "a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target" - had reflected "almost word for word" that briefing.
Mr Cook said that even if some chemical agents or biological toxins were now discovered, it would not justify Mr Blair's claim before the war that Iraq represented a "serious and current threat".
Ms Short was routinely briefed by the intelligence agencies and had insisted on seeing all the material on Iraq, despite initially being blocked by Downing Street.
While MI6 told her that Iraqi scientists were working on "hidden" chemical and biological weapons programmes, "the risk of their use was less".
Their assessment was backed by the Defence Intelligence Staff - the intelligence arm of the armed forces - who said that while there was a risk that Iraq could use chemical or biological weapons "it was not thought to be very high".
Ms Short described the British government's claims about Iraqi weapons before the war as a "series of half truths and exaggerations", although Mr Blair probably believed what he was doing was right.
"I believe that the prime minister must have concluded that it was honourable and desirable to back the US in going for military action in Iraq and therefore it was honourable for him to persuade us through various ruses and ways to get us there - so for him I think it was an honourable deception."
She said decisions about the war had been taken without proper discussion with other ministers and that the Cabinet's overseas and defence committee had never met to discuss the Iraq crisis.
The decision-making had been "sucked out" of the Foreign Office, Ms Short claimed.
"That is quite a collapse in the normal procedures for decision-making. It was only the close entourage who were really part of this."
Although Mr Cook and Ms Short raised concerns about military action at Cabinet meetings, Ms Short said there had been a "compliant atmosphere" among other ministers and that discussions were carefully "guided".
Both ex-ministers criticised the British government's two dossiers on the threat from Iraq. Mr Cook described the first dossier - which said Iraqi weapons could be launched within 45 minutes of an order being issued - as "very thin".
"There was a striking absence of any recent and alarming firm intelligence. The great majority was derivative.
"The plain fact is that a lot of the intelligence in the dossier turned out to be wrong." He said the second "dodgy" dossier - which included material from a PhD thesis lifted from the Internet - had been a "glorious and spectacular own goal".