Cook drops demand for war inquiry

[Whoa_Nelly]

Cook drops demand for war inquiry

(Filed: 19/10/2003)


Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, has withdrawn his demand for a judicial inquiry into the Iraq war because he says the Hutton Inquiry has proven that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Cook, who quit the Cabinet over the war, said the weapons expert Dr David Kelly could still alive if a judicial inquiry into how Britain went to war had been held earlier.

But he said there would be nothing more to gain from a further investigation on top of Lord Hutton's inquiry into how Dr Kelly apparently committed suicide after being named as the mole behind a BBC report that claimed the Government had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons.

<snip>
Mr Cook said the Hutton Inquiry had revealed that the Government did not believe Iraq had illegal weapons and that ministers had realised this by March.

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