Cabinet 'not told of secret war plans'

Robin Cook and Clare Short have revealed that the Cabinet were kept in the dark about secret plans to prepare Britain for war in Iraq.

The former ministers said a leaked Pentagon document obtained by the Evening Standard had underlined their belief that Tony Blair agreed an invasion with George Bush well before the conflict.

Their remarks came as Tory leader Michael Howard for the first time accused the Prime Minister of lying to the nation over the war and the intelligence that drove it.

Mr Cook and Ms Short, who both resigned from the Government over the conflict, seized on the fresh revelations that military planning took place nine months before the invasion.

The leaked Pentagon paper showed that British and American commanders took part in a highlevel planning conference in June 2002.

The coalition partners discussed sending British troops to Turkey as early as August 2002, in what would have been the first deployment of the conflict. Yet three weeks after the military conference, Mr Blair denied to MPs that he was preparing for a possible invasion. Former Commons leader Mr Cook said the Cabinet had been as unaware as the public of the military planning. "It is of course no surprise in a sense that military preparations went back such a long way because we had to shift 40,000 troops to the Middle East by November and that takes serious planning," he said.

"But it does underline my belief that at some point early in 2002, George Bush and the Prime Minister had agreed on what to do. That also came out clearly in other papers leaked recently. The Cabinet didn't see those either."

Ms Short went further, stating that the documents were further proof that Mr Blair had deceived the country in taking Britain into the war.

"We are now learning, by revelation on revelation, that Blair committed himself to go to war a year before it was agreed. Tony Blair deceived his country and then managed us to get us there," she said.

"The evidence has come out bit by bit, step by step, that Tony gave his word to George Bush that he would be with him, and was in favour of regime change.

"I asked him for a full Cabinet discussion that summer [2002] and he said he didn't want it to be debated because it would get into the media. He was saying nothing had been decided and that we should discuss it later."

In an interview for the New Statesman, Mr Howard argued that the Iraq conflict had provoked a huge loss of trust in the Government. He said: "Iraq has been the catalyst for the distrust with which people regard the present Government.

"I think people hold the view pretty firmly now that they were lied to over Iraq. I don't think that's the only thing they were lied to about ... but Iraq is the great catalyst for the loss of trust in the Government."

Asked to clarify whether he thought that Mr Blair himself lied to the public, Mr Howard said: "Yes."

A Labour spokesman declined to comment on Mr Howard's accusation.

Labour MP Alice Mahon said she would try to raise the Evening Standard's revelations in today's debate on Iraq at the party conference in Brighton.

"This is a huge issue of importance. The Evening Standard has exposed what some of us were saying at the time," she said.

The brother of British hostage Ken Bigley also said that the Pentagon documents showed that diplomacy in the run-up to war had been a "sham".

"If we had known then what was going on behind the scenes we might have been able to stop it," he said.

"But it was hidden from us. Many people, including my brother, are paying the price for it."

In a further controversial disclosure, the document - a Pentagon chronology prepared for US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld - also reveals that Israel was involved in the preparation process from an early stage.