UK Warned Against Invasion

On the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, senior British intelligence officials told their American counterparts that they would not support retaliatory action against Iraq, a new book claims.

Tyler Drumheller, who worked for the CIA for 26 years and rose to become head of the agency's European operations, says the former CIA director George Tenet received a "powerful delegation from a very close European ally" at the CIA's headquarters on September 12 2001.

According to Drumheller in his book, On the Brink, the head of the delegation told Mr Tenet that "his government stood by us ... and that we could count on it for any and all support." But the official continued: "I hope we can all agree that we should concentrate on Afghanistan and not be tempted to launch any attacks on Iraq." According to Drumheller, Mr Tenet replied, "Absolutely, we all agree on that."

Although Drumheller does not disclose the nationality of the delegation, two former intelligence officials confirmed to Newsweek magazine that the officials were Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, and David Manning, then a British foreign policy adviser and now the UK ambassador to Washington. British sources confirmed to the magazine that the delegation visited Mr Tenet on September 12.

Sir Richard was the source for the assertion in a Downing Street memo of July 2002 that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of taking military action against Iraq.

Mr Tenet, asked in the run up to the invasion of Iraq how confident he was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, told President George Bush that it was a "slam dunk", according to an account by the journalist Bob Woodward.