'Signed in blood' – Bush and Blair's secret talks at Texas ranch

Published on Thursday 26 November 2009 21:40

TONY Blair deliberately conflated the threats from Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks, the official inquiry into the Iraq war has heard.

• Tony Blair and George Bush shake hands at a news conference after their talks at the Texas ranch in April 2002. Picture: Getty Images

Foreign Office officials have repeatedly told the inquiry, sitting in London, that British intelligence had no evidence of any connection between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda.

But former British ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer, below, said Mr Blair had directly linked the two following a private meeting with the then US president George Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The next day, the then prime minister had spoken publicly for first time about the case for "regime change" in Iraq.

Sir Christopher said that it appeared agreement on a new approach towards Iraq had been "signed in blood" by Mr Blair and Mr Bush.

Giving evidence on the third day of the inquiry, he also contrasted Mr Blair's handling of the Iraq conflict unfavourably with the way he believed Margaret Thatcher would have dealt with it had she been prime minister.

"I think she would have insisted on a coherent diplomatic strategy, and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck would happen if and when we removed Saddam Hussein," he said.

Sir Christopher said, initially, when the Bush administration came to power in January 2001, there had been little talk in Washington of a regime change in Iraq, even though it had been official US policy since 1998. "It was like a grumbling appendix," he said. However, after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, "everything changed".

By the time Mr Blair met Mr Bush at the ranch in April 2002, Sir Christopher said there would have been no point in "banging on" about "regime change", only to say Britain would not support it.

He said it was still unclear exactly what the two leaders discussed in private, but afterwards there was an apparent shift in the British position.

"I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there," he said.

"To this day, I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch."

The following day, however, Mr Blair made a speech in which he spoke publicly for the first time about regime change in Iraq.

"What he was trying to do was to draw the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq which led – I think not inadvertently, but deliberately – to a conflation of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein," Sir Christopher said.

"When I heard that speech, I thought that this represents a tightening of the UK/US alliance."

He said Mr Blair had always been a "true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein", having made a speech on the subject as far back as 1998.

However, the Foreign Office had ruled that there was no legal basis for seeking to oust the Iraqi dictator and, prior to the Crawford meeting, Mr Blair had generally been "discreet" about his views.

Unlike the British, key US figures, such as then deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, were convinced of a "strong connection" between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Sir Christopher said they had been "spooked" by the appearance in the US shortly after 9/11 of a number of "anthrax-tainted" letters. "The last person who had ever used anthrax was Saddam Hussein," he said.

By this stage, Sir Christopher said the British priority was to get the US administration to agree to seek a new United Nations Security Council resolution to provide the basis for military action and overcome the objections of Foreign Office lawyers.

Although it had won a new Security Council resolution in November 2002, the strategy was ultimately a failure, because Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors had not been given enough time to complete their work.

Sir Christopher said the "real problem" was that the US military had been planning for an invasion in March 2003, which left the British and Americans "scrambling" to find proof in time that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

The inquiry continues.

TIMELINE

&#149 November-December: Former top civil servants, spy chiefs, diplomats and military commanders to give evidence

&#149 January-February 2010: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other politicians expected to appear

&#149 March 2010: Inquiry expected to adjourn for general election

&#149 July-August 2010: Inquiry expected to resume

&#149 Report published by early 2011