'No invasion of Iraq if UK had known Saddam had no WMD'

Published on Monday 19 April 2010 22:32

BRITAIN would not have invaded Iraq in 2003 if it had been clear that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Foreign Secretary David Miliband claimed yesterday.

Mr Miliband said there would have been no United Nations Security Council resolutions and no vote in the House of Commons "if we had known then what we know now".

His position appears to clash with comments made by then-prime minister Tony Blair, who said last year he would "still have thought it right" to remove Saddam if he had known there were no WMD in the country.

And last month Gordon Brown, who was Chancellor at the time of the invasion, told the Iraq War Inquiry that the main issue for him was that Iraq was already in long-term breach of UN resolutions.

Mr Miliband made the comments during a television debate on foreign affairs and defence.

Asked if he would still have supported the invasion of Iraq if he had known then what was known now, Mr Miliband replied: "Obviously there would have been no such decision.

"If we had known then what we know now, if we'd have known that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, there would have been no UN resolutions and no vote in the House of Commons."

In a TV interview with Fern Britton last year, Mr Blair said other reasons would have been needed to justify removing Saddam if it had been known that Iraq had no WMD.

Mr Brown, giving evidence to the inquiry in March, said it had been the "right decision" to overthrow Saddam, who he said had been a "serial violator" of international law.