London, November 25: A former top British intelligence officer says British officials decided in 2001 against participating in talks with their US counterparts about regime change in Iraq.
Peter Ricketts, now permanent secretary at the Home Office, said Tuesday that British officials were aware months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States that the Bush administration was pressing for the removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
US and British officials believed at the time that measures against Iraq were failing. The measures consisted of sanctions, an incentive to lift sanctions if Saddam allowed the United Nations weapons inspectors to return, and the ‘no fly’ zones over the north and south of Iraq.
Ricketts also said that US officials had raised the prospect of regime change in Iraq, asserting that the British weren’t supportive of the idea at the time.
“We were conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” Ricketts added.
Relatives of the British dead together with anti-war protesters have long argued that London used distorted intelligence, including unsubstantiated claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, to justify the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Britain has lost 179 military personnel in Iraq.
——Agencies