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Britain's former attorney-general cautioned a cabinet minister about the legality of going to war in Iraq, one year before he gave the government the go-ahead to take part in the 2003 conflict, letters have revealed.
Peter Goldsmith, the government's senior legal adviser at the time, wrote in 2002 that he was "not aware of existence of material" that would indicate an "imminent threat from Iraq".
"I think you should know that I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defense," Goldsmith wrote to Geoff Hoon, Britain's defense minister from 1999 to 2005.
"In particular I am not aware of the existence of material indicating the existence of an imminent threat from Iraq of the sort which would justify military action without support of a [UN] Security Council Chapter VII authorization."
Goldsmith later told the cabinet in March 2003 that the war was legal without a UN resolution, and the US-led invasion went ahead three days later.
The letters were released as Hoon gave evidence to a British public inquiry into the Iraq war.
He is the most senior politician to appear before the hearings so far.
'Legal justification'
Hoon told the hearing in London on Tuesday that Goldsmith had "categorically" concluded that "there was a legal justification for military action" in his final conclusion in 2003.
He also said the government wanted a diplomatic solution to the crisis and did not think Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time, gave a promise to George Bush, the US president, to support war come what may.
"I think that right up until the vote in the House of Commons, our attitude towards the use of force was always conditional," Hoon said.
He identified mid-2002 as the period when it become clear that Washington "meant business" over Iraq, because the country was so deeply traumatized over the September 11, 2001 attacks and it perceived Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader at the time, as another threat.
"It was getting pretty real by then. I think there was a real sense of the Americans thinking through in a very practical way the consequences of the 'axis of evil' speech [by Bush] and focusing on Iraq.
"So we had no doubt at that stage in the summer that they meant business."
Bush first branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002.
Wide-ranging inquiry
The Iraq war inquiry is Britain's third and widest-ranging inquiry into the conflict, which triggered huge anti-war protests in the UK at the time.
Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera's correspondent in London, said the inquiry will be looking to Blair, who is due to testify on January 29, for key evidence at the hearing.
"The Iraq inquiry says it is 'struggling to find' key intelligence evidence supporting Tony Blair's case for war," she said.
"It will be asking him to fill in those gaps when he appears here next week."
Two previous reports on aspects of the war have 'cleared' Blair's government of 'wrongdoing' over the conflict.
PHOTO CAPTION
An Iraqi boy shows a photo of himself taken before US helicopters attacked the vegetable field where he was playing which left him with no sight in his right eye and severe burns to most of his face.
Al-Jazeera
