The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, claimed total vindication last night over the arms-for-Africa affair after a Whitehall inquiry cleared ministers and blamed misjudgments by overworked officials for a breach of the UN embargo on Sierra Leone.
Introducing a "sweeping programme" of reforms he pledged would give Britain "a modern Foreign Office", Mr Cook confidently rebuffed criticism from Mr Michael Howard, his Tory shadow, who insisted that the Foreign Office was in a shambles and asked when he planned to resign.
In 160 closely-written pages the report by Sir Thomas Legg catalogues the chain of mistakes and misunderstandings that allowed a British security firm, Sandline International, to illegally supply arms to the West African country.
But it does little more than blame "management and cultural factors" for what went wrong and is unlikely to produce more than a rebuke for Mr Peter Penfold, the High Commissioner in Sierra Leone, who, the report says, exceeded his authority in contacts with Sandline.
Mr Cook welcomed its findings in a Commons statement, promising there would be no scapegoats and pledging that "this should be the end of the matter as far as officials are concerned".
The report concluded that "some officials became aware or had notice of the plan" to ship arms to Sierra Leone to aid the bid by President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah's bid to restore his government.
Mr Penfold, forced into exile in neighbouring Guinea with President Kabbah, was said to have given Sandline a degree of approval which he had no authority to do. But he did not know the shipment would be illegal.