Blair committed United Kingdom to Iraq war year before invasion

A spokesman for the former prime minister said the memo was consistent with what he had been saying at the time.

The classified briefing note, published by the Mail on Sunday, emerged after a court ruling in the USA led to the publication of thousands of emails received by Hillary Clinton, who served as Secretary of State under President Obama.

“On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary”, the Mail on Sunday said in a report on its Web site, citing a document written by Powell. The notion that Tony Blair had indicated as much to George Bush has always been the essence of the case against the former prime minister. But within weeks of his meeting at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas in April 2002, to which the Powell memo refers, details of what the two leaders had privately agreed were leaking into the public domain.

The note from in March 2002 tells Bush that Blair would “present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause”.

“Aside from his foreign and defense secretaries, however, Blair’s Cabinet shows signs of division and the Labour Party and the British Public are unconvinced that military action is warranted now …”

Powell writes: “A sizeable number of his [Blair’s] MPs remain at present opposed to military action against Iraq… a few would favor shifting from a policy of containment of Iraq if they had recent (and publicly usable) proof that Iraq is developing WMD/missiles… most seem to want a few sort of United Nations endorsement for military action”.

Publicly, he insisted he was fighting for a diplomatic solution to the crisis amid claims Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – allegations that turned out to be untrue.

During his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry in January 2010, he denied he had struck a secret deal with Mr Bush at Crawford to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

A spokeswoman for Mr Blair said: “This story is nothing new”. When Mr Blair gave evidence to Chilcot, he said he “would not have done Iraq if I had not thought it was right”.

SNP MP Alex Salmond said the memo was “extremely damaging” for Mr Blair.

“It proves what the anti-war movements were saying from the first moments that an invasion of Iraq was obviously in the planning”, Bambery told Press TV’s UK Desk in an exclusive interview.

The memos are likely to lead to demands for Sir John Chilcot to reopen his inquiry into the Iraq war.

The inquiry into decisions and mistakes in Britain’s planning and execution of the war began in 2009, but the timetable for release remains unclear.