"Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but the fear of repressive States linking up with terrorist groups justifies robust action against any Weapons of Mass Destruction programmes, even if evidence is scanty
"
This is what Tony Blair, former British prime minister, said while appearing before the Iraq Inquiry on Friday when he was probed on reasons behind UK joining the Iraqi invasion of 2003.
Backtracking from his recent comments that the invasion would have been justified whether or not Saddam had WMDs, Blair insisted that WMDs and not regime change were the grounds for the war.
The Iraq Inquiry is looking at events between 2001 and 2009 -- covering the decision to go to war, whether troops were properly prepared, how the conflict was conducted and what planning there was for its aftermath.
Many senior diplomats, civil servants and military commanders involved in the build-up to war, the military campaign itself and the aftermath have appeared before the panel.
Assessing the threat that Saddam would have posed if not stopped back in 2003, he said: "Supposing we had backed off. What we now know is that he retained the intent and intellectual know-how to resume production of WMDs. If we had taken the decision to leave him there, he would have the intent and the financial means to launch an attack, and we would have lost our nerve."
Blair also denied having a secret deal with then US President George W Bush at the latter's Texas ranch and clarified that the message he was trying to send was that 'if it came to military action, because diplomacy failed, Britain would be with the US'.
"The only commitment I gave, and I gave this very openly, was that we had to deal with Saddam. We agreed that we had to confront this issue, but the method for doing that was open. Bush wanted to express to me his fear that if we were not prepared to act in strong way we ran the risk of sending a disastrous signal to the rest of world," he said.
According to media reports, the significant focus of the Iraq Inquiry is on the legal arguments surrounding the war and whether it was justified without explicit UN authorisation.
