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Fresh evidence that US President George W. Bush was determined to invade Iraq with or without UN approval emerged Friday in an updated book from a prominent British expert on international law.
Philippe Sands, citing a confidential memo in a new edition of "Lawless World," said Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair on January 31, 2003 that he already had a date -- March 10, 2003 -- for starting the war.
Blair responded that he was "solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm" Saddam Hussein's regime -- despite no hard evidence from UN inspectors that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Bush even went so far as to suggest that a US military plane could masquerade as a UN aircraft, in the hope that Iraq would shoot at it, thus justifying a green light from the United Nations for war, according to Sands.
Sands told reporters Friday that his revelations came out of a note from the two-hour meeting in the White House, prepared by one of six close aides and advisers who were present.
He said the revelations were important in the current context of the United States and its European allies trying to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its feared pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"What this material tends to indicate is that we cannot have a high level of confidence in the American president and Britain's prime minister's ability to take future important decisions in an informed and sensible way," he said.
"That I think is the fundamental issue at stake here."
A spokesman for Blair said: "We do not comment on the prime minister's conversations with other leaders."
He added that the prime minister only committed British troops to Iraq once he secured approval from parliament on March 18, 2003 -- two days before the war actually began.
Sands is a partner in Matrix Chambers, a London law firm that not only includes other critics of the Iraq war, but also Cherie Booth, the prime minister's lawyer-spouse.
The letter from the January 31, 2003 meeting builds on the so-called "Downing Street Memo," which came to light in May last year in the Sunday Times newspaper and provoked fresh skepticism in the United States over the war.
That document summed up a July 23, 2002 meeting on Iraq at the prime minister's office, attended by Blair and close aides, in which it was reportedly said that Bush "had made up his mind to take military action".
When Bush and Blair met in Washington on January 31, 2003, the focus was on getting one last UN Security Council resolution declaring that Iraq was in breach of earlier UN resolutions and effectively giving its blessing for war.
Sands, citing the memo, said Blair raised "no objection" when told by Bush that bombing would begin on March 10 and that, in the lawyer's paraphrasing, "the diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning".
"It is clear (from the note) that they had no information of their own which could give rise to an expectation of hard evidence emerging" that would enable the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution, Sands wrote.
Quoting from the note, Sands also revealed that Bush told Blair on January 31 that "the US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours."
"If Saddam fired on them," in the words of the note, "he would be in breach" of earlier UN resolutions -- making it easier for Washington and London to get a final resolution from its reluctant UN Security Council partners.
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AFP 031458 GMT 02 06
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