Ex-Minister Says Blair Knew Iraq Had No WMD

LONDON, Oct. 5 — Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded privately that Iraq did not have the quickly deployable weapons of mass destruction that the British government cited as justification for war, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook asserted today.

Mr. Cook, who resigned his post as leader of the House of Commons because of Britain's decision to join in the American-led war, said Mr. Blair also made it clear to him in a conversation two weeks before combat began that he did not believe Saddam Hussein's weapons posed a "real and present danger" to Britain.

A controversial intelligence dossier published last September argued that Iraq had unconventional weapons that could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given. Mr. Cook said that he had no reason to doubt that Mr. Blair believed the claim at the time it was made, but that in a conversation on March 5, Mr. Blair told him the weapons were only battlefield munitions and could not be assembled by Mr. Hussein for quick use because of "all the effort he has put into concealment."

Mr. Cook's account was made public in extracts published in The Sunday Times of London from Point of Departure, a book based on his diary entries from the period.

Mr. Cook asks, "If Number 10 accepted that Saddam had no real W.M.D. which he could credibly use against city targets and if they themselves believed that he could not reassemble his chemical weapons in a credible timescale for use on the battlefield, just how much of a threat did they really think Saddam represented?"

In response, a 10 Downing Street spokesman said: "The idea that the prime minister ever said that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction is absurd. His views have been consistent throughout, both publicly and privately, as his cabinet colleagues know. Robin Cook's views are well known and have been expressed many times before."

Mr. Blair's popularity has fallen to its lowest point since he came to power in 1997 because of the American and British failure to find unconventional weapons and because of public suspicions, aired during six weeks of hearings this summer, that the British government doctored intelligence to win support for an unpopular war.

Mr. Cook said it was his impression last March that Mr. Blair was determined to take military action regardless of any progress made by Hans Blix and his team of United Nations weapons inspectors.

Mr. Cook said that he and other cabinet members worried that Mr. Blair's decision was motivated more by his desire to maintain Britain's influence in Washington than to protect British interests against a possible terror attack.

"I am certain," Mr. Cook writes, "the real reason he went to war was that he found it easier to resist the public opinion of Britain than the request of the president of the United States."

A year before, Mr. Cook says, Mr. Blair had instructed the cabinet: "We must steer close to America. If we don't, we will lose our influence to shape what they do."

Mr. Cook said that days after publication of the intelligence dossier, he returned from a trip to Continental Europe and reported to fellow ministers that people there and in the Middle East saw Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel as a greater threat than Mr. Hussein.

"Somewhat to my surprise," he said, "this line provoked a round of 'hear, hearing' from colleagues, which is the nearest I've heard to a mutiny in the cabinet."

Mr. Cook served as foreign secretary during Mr. Blair's first term in office. Unlike the other cabinet member to quit over the war, International Development Secretary Clare Short, Mr. Cook declared himself a Blair loyalist in his resignation speech to the House of Commons and said he hoped to see him remain in office.

Reporting his diary entry from the last meeting he had with Mr. Blair before quitting the cabinet, he says: "I got the impression that he was a man who was genuinely puzzled as to how he had got into his present dilemma. I suspect he had never expected to find himself ordering British troops into war without U.N. backing.

"The root problem of the past year has been that Tony was so convinced of the case against Saddam that he never doubted that the rest of the world would come to see it his way and had therefore left himself no other way out."