Foreign Office lawyer says Iraq war was illegal

London Times

The most senior Foreign Office lawyer at the time of the invasion of Iraq said today that he had considered the Iraq war to be illegal because it had not been authorised by the United Nations.

In potentially explosive testimony to the Iraq Inquiry, Sir Michael Wood also told how Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary, had told the Americans he was "entirely comfortable" to be making the case for military action a year before the invasion eventually took place.

That runs counter to Mr Straw's own evidence to the inquiry last week, when he insisted that he had only "very reluctantly" supported the war.

Both Sir Michael, the former chief legal adviser at the FCO, and his deputy, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, testified to Sir John Chilcot's panel of inquiry, which has already heard from a succession of senior officials and ministers and is due to quiz Tony Blair on Friday.

Ms Wilmshurst became the only British civil servant to quit over the war when she resigned days before the first attacks on Iraq, telling her superiors that an invasion without UN sanction would be a "crime of aggression".

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