Blair warned of post-war trouble

2004-09-18 09:11

London - Secret papers sent to British Prime Minister Tony Blair a year before the US-led invasion of Iraq warned of the risks of Iraq sliding into post-war chaos, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Saturday.

One of the warnings came from Blair's own foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who predicted in March 2002 that post-war Iraq was liable to be a source of major problems, the newspaper said.

"There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything," wrote Straw in the letter, one of several documents marked "secret" which the Daily Telegraph said it had seen.

Straw pointed out that most US assessments were pushing for the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime as a way to eliminate Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction.

"But no one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better," Straw wrote, according to the Daily Telegraph.

"Iraq has no history of democracy, so no-one has this habit or experience."

Another document, from the Cabinet Office's overseas and defence secretariat, marked "Secret UK Eyes Only," said "nation-building" in a post-Saddam Iraq was a task liable to take "many years".

"The greater investment of Western forces, the greater our control over Iraq's future, but the greater the cost and the longer we would need to stay," the document stated.

It argued that ousting Saddam, and replacing him with another "Sunni strongman," would not necessarily erase Iraq's desire to possess weapons of mass destruction to balance a strategic threat posed by Iran and Israel.

Risk of system reverting to type

"There would ... be a strong risk of the Iraqi system reverting to type. Military coup could succeed coup until an autocratic Sunni dictator emerged who protected Sunni interests," it said. "With time he could acquire WMD."

For a democratic government in Baghdad to survive, "it would require the US and others to commit to nation-building for many years", the document said, and "this would entail a substantial international security force".

The other document, sent to Blair by foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning after a trip to Washington in March 2002, stated: "I think there is a real risk that the (Bush) administration underestimates the difficulties."

"They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean they will necessarily avoid it," Manning wrote.

A spokesperson for Blair declined to comment on the documents, while defending the prime minister's decision to take Britain into the Iraq war.

"We do not comment on leaked documents, but the government has made clear the case for military action in Iraq on many occasions and firmly believes that Iraq is a better place for the removal of Saddam Hussein," he said.

US President George W Bush has acknowledged problems in Iraq but has also defended his decision to go to war.

- AFP