Chilcot to unmask Blair-Bush talks on Iraq war

A report into British involvement in the Iraq war and its aftermath is set to disclose secret conversations between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W Bush.

A decade after Britain’s controversial role in the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Chilcot inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, will finally publish a fuller account of communications between Blair and Bush.

According to The Independent, the long-awaited report into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war will publish a cache of notes from Blair to Bush, records of telephone conversations and meetings, as well as up to 200 minutes of cabinet-level discussions in the new year.

A Whitehall source said that “good progress” had been made towards declassifying many of the records, adding that, “There will be a lot more than people were expecting.”

He also noted that some of the contents of the documents will be blacked out for national security reasons and to prevent damage to US-Britain relations.

According to government sources, the papers are likely to be published within three months, clearing the way for the publication of the final report.

The inquiry is expected to issue its final report by the end of 2014, five years after it was set up by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law in 2003 under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. No WMDs, however, were ever discovered in Iraq.

According to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored, more than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the invasion and subsequent occupation of the country.