LONDON — President Bush told Prime Minister Tony Blair nearly two months before the invasion of Iraq that the United States intended to go to war even if inspectors failed to find evidence of a banned weapons program, a human rights lawyer claimed in a book published yesterday.
Author Philippe Sands said Mr. Bush made the comments in a White House meeting with Mr. Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. He cites a memo of the meeting as saying Mr. Bush also told Mr. Blair that military intervention was scheduled for March 10, 2003, even without U.N. backing.
The prime minister responded that he was “solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm” Saddam Hussein, Mr. Sands quotes Mr. Blair as saying in the new edition of “Lawless World.”
Mr. Sands, who is also a professor of international law at University College, London, said the meeting lasted two hours and was attended by six advisers.
A spokesman for Mr. Blair said Downing Street does not comment on books or on leaked documents, and reiterated that Britain only committed to military action in Iraq after approval by the House of Commons on March 18, 2003.
Mr. Sands works for the same law firm, Matrix Chambers, where Cherie Booth Blair, the prime minister’s wife, practices. The first edition of “Lawless World,” published last year, included claims about the advice Britain’s attorney general gave the government on the legality of the war.
The book also claims Mr. Blair only wanted a second U.N. Security Council resolution approving the invasion to make it easier politically to deal with Saddam.
Other claims made in the book say Mr. Bush floated the idea of a number of extreme measures aimed at provoking Saddam.
The president is said to have told Mr. Blair the United States “was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq. The aircraft would be painted in U.N. colors, so that if Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach of U.N. resolutions,” the book said.
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