Sir William Ehrman and Tim Dowse, who were the heads of international security and counter proliferation respectively at the department in the run-up to the war, face questions over the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
A dossier published before the 2003 war contained the famous, but now discredited, claim that Saddam Hussein had WMDs that could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given.
On the inquiry’s opening day in London on Tuesday, it emerged that British officials secretly discussed the prospects for “regime change” in Iraq in late 2001 – more than a year before the invasion.
Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot heard that Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials drew up an internal “options” paper which included the possibility of ousting Saddam Hussein.
However Sir William Patey, the then head of the FCO’s Middle East department, said the idea had been swiftly rejected on the grounds that there was “no basis in law” for such action.
The inquiry heard that a two-page paper was drawn up against a background of growing impatience in the United States with the strategy of “containment” of Saddam.
The international sanctions regime was “in trouble”, while there were increasing concerns that Saddam was making progress in his efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Sir William said: “This is a paper I commissioned from my staff and said, ‘Come on, let’s have the whole range of options out here. Nothing’s off the table’.”
The options went from “’hard’ containment to ‘soft’ containment, to the lifting of sanctions, to – I have to say – we had at the end the regime-change option, which was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law.”
He added: “It was very much an internal paper. We didn’t go into how to achieve regime change.”
The inquiry also heard that even in early 2001, elements of the new US administration of President George Bush were already discussing the possibility of “regime change” in Iraq.
Sir Peter Ricketts, who was chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), said Britain wanted a strengthened “smart sanctions regime” – a position initially backed by senior figures in the Bush administration like secretary of state Colin Powell.
But following the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, Sir Peter said there had been a further hardening of opinion in the US.
“We heard people in Washington thought there might be some link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden – undocumented. I don’t think we saw any evidence of it,” he said.
“The tone of voice was more if there turns out to be any link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, that is going to have major implications for Iraq and Saddam Hussein.”
Relatives of some of the 179 UK service personnel killed in Iraq gathered outside the inquiry venue yesterday.
The inquiry could take more than a year, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and predecessor Tony Blair expected to be among future witnesses.
Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot
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