IRAQ: MORE DEATHS, MORE QUESTIONS . . . As British military deaths in Iraq pass 100, new claims have emerged that Blair and Bush decided to go to war two months before telling the world. James Cusick investigates

Given new evidence of what was discussed in the closed meeting, he ought to have said: "Time just ran out for Saddam."

From the meeting's end until the start of the war on March 30, the Prime Minister was engaged in a two-month political "sham" which hid his decision to send British troops to Iraq irrespective or whether the United Nations Security Council backed the use of force against Saddam Hussein's regime.

The accusation has been made by Philippe Sands QC, the lawyer whose investigations last year forced the government to publish the first draft of the advice it received from the attorney-general, and which left question marks over the legality of the war.

New evidence uncovered by Sands shows Blair telling President Bush in January 2003 that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq that March, with or without a second UN resolution authorising force.

Sands, professor of international law at University College, London, told the Sunday Herald that a memo, whose authenticity has not been dismissed by Downing Street, "confirms what we have suspected and felt instinctively" from other accounts.

"Everything that was said and done by the Prime Minister from that meeting on January 31 till Iraq was invaded on March 30 was a sham, " he said.

Sands accused the Prime Minister of "deliberately" taking steps not to take comprehensive legal advice from attorney-general Lord Goldsmith before the January 31 meeting in Washington ended. It was only after the effective pact with Bush that Goldsmith visited Washington, on February 11, for discussions with John Bellinger, Bush's legal adviser in the White House. Bellinger later told British officials that he had "trouble with your attorney but we got him there eventually", putting into context the importance of the January 31 meeting.

The memo obtained by Sands - he refuses to say whether it originated in the UK or in the US - is an acute embarrassment for Blair. Its details are published in a new edition of Sands's book, Lawless World, published in the week the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq passed the 100 mark.

The 100th fatality was named as Corporal Gordon Pritchard, 31, of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, who died in the southern port town of Um Qasr. He died in a Land Rover that was part of a three-vehicle convoy hit by an explosion. The Ministry of Defence described it as a routine "rations and water" run. Three other soldiers were injured.

Three days before Christmas last year, Tony Blair met father-of-three Pritchard at the Shaibah logistics base. The two were photographed in front of a tank, Blair smiling under the tank barrel, wearing a dark blazer and open-necked shirt.

Last Friday the 101st UK military death of the war was announced, a soldier from the 9th/12th Lancers who died in a road accident outside Basra.

As Downing Street strives to secure Blair's domestic policy legacy and tries to ensure a substantial backbench revolt against proposed education reforms does not derail a Commons vote next month, the latest deaths only confirm Number 10's fears that the potent political issue of Iraq will not fade.

A Foreign Office source told the Sunday Herald: "The 100th death and these latest accusations from Professor Sands are co-incidental in timing. But their confluence will undoubtedly be unhelpful for the government. Iraq has become part of the debate on the Prime Minister's legacy and, while it often appears it is a debate he rarely wins, that debate is still on-going."

Downing Street refused to attack the veracity and existence of the new and damaging memo. It said: "The decision to resort to military action to ensure Iraq fulfilled its obligations imposed by successive Security Council resolutions was taken only after attempts to disarm Iraq had failed."

Downing Street also insisted there were "frequent discussions" between the UK and US governments about Iraq but said it did not comment on the Prime Minister's conversations with leaders.

The details of the January 31 meeting acquired by Sands paint an entirely different and contradictory picture to that given in Downing Street's account. Sands told the Sunday Herald: "What this memo confirms unequivocally is that Bush by this date had already taken the decision on war in Iraq. It also confirms that Tony Blair confirmed his unqualified support for war at this date - irrespective of whether a second UN resolution would follow. And this is completely contrary to everything he said publicly after this date till the war began on March 30."

ACCORDING to Sands, the memo is also striking for what Blair fails to say to Bush during their two-hour meeting: "Blair doesn't say, 'I can't promise you anything without a second UN resolution.' Nor does he promise assistance to Bush if a legal way forward is found [complying with international law]. So everything that happened or was said after this meeting was a sham."

The memo acquired by Sands reveals that, despite Bush's concerns about the continuing failure to find usable evidence against Saddam, the White House had decided that military action would follow even if there were no success at the UN, with March 10 pencilled in as the start of the campaign.

Bush, according to the Sands's account "did not mince his words" to Blair. The US President said "diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning". Blair is said to have raised no objection at this point, telling Bush instead he was "solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam".

Although Blair told Bush he believed a second UN resolution was within reach, he said he didn't believe reports expected from UN weapons inspection teams in Iraq, headed by Dr Hans Blix, would deliver anything helpful. The leaders discussed other options. Bush told Blair the US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]."

There was also discussion about an Iraqi defector being brought out who could give "a public presentation about Saddam's WMD". The possibility of Saddam's outright assassination was also brought up.

Despite Bush and Blair's shared concern that they did not have enough substantial evidence against Saddam to convince the UN Security Council of his failures, five days later US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the Security Council in New York with what he said was undeniable "evidence" of Iraq's ongoing WMD programme.

Powell told the UN: "How much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say enough, enough?"

Powell told the BBC a fortnight ago that although he now knows the information he gave at the time was false, he thought it correct at the time. He could not explain why he had presented the information as watertight intelligence that was unequivocal, certain and precise.

Sands says: "Bush and Blair had no information of their own which would give rise to an expectation of hard evidence emerging that would be sufficient to deliver the politically desirable second Security Council resolution. They were dependent on Blix."

Powell wasn't waiting for Blix. And neither was Blair. Sands says: "Those who attended that meeting in Washington and went to the White House noticed Blair's unease, his awkward body language. A decision had been taken at that meeting and it was a momentous one. In Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, the January 31 meeting is described as the 'second resolution meeting'."

Five weeks after the January 31 conversation, in which Blair had told Bush he was "solidly" behind the White House, Goldsmith produced a draft of his advice on the legality of the war. The advice, which the government refused to publish till the eve of last year's election, had Goldsmith warning Blair that the safest legal course would be to "secure the adoption of a second UN resolution which authorised force".

The detailed legal advice was never presented to the Cabinet.

According to Sands, the parliamentary answer given by Goldsmith, which had been stripped of all its caveats and hesitancy over the war's legality, "was not legal advice, it was an instrument of persuasion, designed to reassure parliamentarians, Cabinet ministers and the public. It belongs to the same category as the dossiers on weapons of mass destruction."

On February 23, 2003, Blair told the Commons that Saddam was to be given one more chance, "one final chance to disarm voluntarily". The PM added: "Even now we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament through the UN . . . we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully."

If Blair had already signed up to the March 10 invasion date, regardless of whether there was another UN resolution or not, was the Commons being deceived on a grand scale? Sands has no doubt: "It was a sham."

Liberal Democrats' acting leader Sir Menzies Campbell believes the content of Sands's memo and its implications means Blair has a "lot of explaining to do".

He says: "The fact that consideration was apparently given to using US military aircraft dressed in UN colours in the hope of provoking Saddam is a graphic illustration of the rush to war. It would appear that diplomatic efforts after the meeting of January 31 were simply going through the motions."

COUNTDOWN TO WAR

January 31, 2003: Bush meets Blair at the White House. A memo records Bush telling Blair: "The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning."

Bush is quoted as saying America would "put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution [from the UN, authorising military action]" and would "twist arms" and "even threaten". He allegedly tells Blair that if that did not succeed, "military action would follow anyway".

Blair is recorded as saying he was "solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam."

February 23: Blair tells Commons "Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament through the UN. I detest his regime . . . I hope most people do . . . but even now he could save it by complying with the UN's demands. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully."

March 18: Blair says in the Commons that "The UN should be the focus both of diplomacy and of action . . . [and that not to take military action] would do more damage in the long term to the UN than any other single course that we could pursue."

March 20: War begins.