Hans Blix: Allies used 'poor' intelligence ahead of Iraq invasion

Former head of UN weapons inspectors tells Chilcot inquiry 'alarm bells' should have rung when his staff failed to find evidence of WMD
Hans Blix
Hans Blix, the former head of the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission in Iraq. Photograph: Seppo Sirkka/EPA

Britain and the US relied on dubious intelligence sources ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspectors said today.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Hans Blix said it should have set alarm bells ringing in London and Washington when the inspectors repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence that Saddam Hussein still had active weapons of mass destruction programmes.

Blix said he warned the then prime minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting that Saddam Hussein might not have any weapons of mass destruction. He told the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the same thing.

He said: "When we reported that we did not find any weapons of mass destruction they should have realised, I think, both in London and in Washington, that their sources were poor. They should have been more critical about that."

Blix said that he had privately confided to Blair in autumn 2002 – before the inspectors returned to Iraq – that he thought it "plausible" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

However in the weeks leading up to the invasion in March 2003 – after the inspectors had failed to uncover anything significant – he said that he had cautioned Blair that there might not be anything.

He said that he told Blair: "Wouldn't it be paradoxical if you were to invade Iraq with 250,000 men and find very little?"

He added: "I gave a warning that things had changed and there might not be so much."

Blix has claimed in the past that inspectors had too little time to assess whether Saddam was concealing weapons of mass destruction, as the US and Britain believed.

He said that, immediately before the 2003 US-led invasion, his inspectors checked around 30 sites said by British and US intelligence to contain weapons of mass destruction, but discovered little more than some old missile engines and a sheaf of nuclear documents.

He also said told the inquiry that he never felt "weapons of mass destruction" was a useful term because it conflated nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and the British more or less accepted there was no nuclear threat.

Blix acknowledged the pressure of the US military buildup in the region had led Saddam to agree to the return of the UN inspectors in September 2002.

However he said that he did not believe that Britain and the US had been entitled to invade Iraq without a further UN security council resolution specifically authorising military action.

He accused the administration of US president George Bush of being "high on military" in the wake of the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.

"They felt that they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable," he said.

He also condemned claims by Britain and the US that Iraq had tried to acquire raw uranium for its supposed nuclear programme from Niger, based on a forged document.

Blix said: "That was perhaps the first occasion I became suspicious about the evidence. I think that was the most scandalous part."