Straw in dock for 'illegal' invasion of Iraq

Jack Straw overruled top Foreign Office legal advisers who believed war against Iraq would be unlawful, the Butler report is set to reveal.

In a dramatic development, Lord Butler's report will highlight serious unease among government law officers about whether the invasion to topple Saddam Hussain broke international law.

The Foreign Secretary was warned by his department's legal experts in 2002 that the military campaign needed a second UN Security Council resolution explicitly backing war.

But Straw, a barrister, used his ministerial authority to override their advice and insisted that existing UN resolutions were enough to justify the attack.

The disclosure is one of the biggest surprises to emerge from the long-awaited Butler report into the use and interpretation of secret intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

It will lead to intense controversy over the motives for the war and particularly the role played by the government's most senior law officer, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.

Other key findings in the report, to be published on Wednesday, are:

• Tony Blair's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction of September 2002 was fundamentally flawed because it left out a string of vital caveats about what the intelligence agencies actually knew.

• The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chaired by John Scarlett – recently named as the next head of MI6 – is most heavily criticised for the failings of the dossier.

• The 45-minute claim about alleged Iraqi chemical weapons being on standby for use should never have been published because it was vague and poorly founded. The original JIC assessment was covered with warnings but these were dropped during the writing of the dossier.

• The prime minister's own style of governing will be criticised for weakening checks and balances that might have helped to avoid the mistakes. Lord Butler, a former Cabinet Secretary, is likely to express dismay that his former post no longer appears to serve the whole Cabinet but only No 10.

He examined unedited MI6 reports and interviewed senior figures to piece together the failures which led the government to claim Saddam had an arsenal of illegal weapons. No weapons have been found and this week Blair admitted they may not have existed at the time of the invasion.

Scarlett and Sir Richard Dearlove, the outgoing head of MI6, were sent draft pages of the Butler findings for comment, according to Whitehall insiders, indicating that they or their departments are criticised in it.

Officials believe Lord Butler has "pulled his punches" to spare Scarlett from being pilloried because he is considered too important to the intelligence services.

Whitehall officials are confident that Blair's close advisers, including Alastair Campbell, will be criticised less severely than has been speculated.

In a crucial verdict, the report will say the JIC was ultimately responsible for the content and wording of the dossier because of Scarlett's decision to take "ownership" of the document.

© Evening Standard