Secret memo calls Blair's bluff on Saddam threat

London: A secret MI5 memo revealed Labour ministers were told that Saddam Hussain's ability to carry out a terrorist atrocity in the UK was limited.

Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, then deputy director-general of the Security Service, concluded a terror attack was unlikely even if Iraq were to be invaded.

Her letter to senior Home Office mandarins in March 2002 further exposes as a lie Tony Blair's claim that Saddam could launch chemical and biological warheads at UK targets in just 45 minutes.

This allegation was the key plank of a Downing Street dossier used to justify the controversial invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Baroness Manningham-Buller summarised the terrorist threat to the UK in the event of an attack on Iraq in a top secret memo to Sir John Gieve, then the senior civil servant at the Home Office, in March 2002, a year before the war.

The newly-declassified document was published by the Iraq Inquiry on Monday.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, who became MI5 head later that year, wrote: "Even limited military action would be unlikely to prompt such a response. Saddam is only likely to order terrorist attacks if he perceives the survival of his regime is threatened." She added: "If Saddam were to initiate a terrorist campaign, we assess that Iraqi capability to mount attacks in the UK is currently limited."

She reiterated her views before the inquiry.