'Straw urged Blair not to go to war in Iraq'

According to the book, Straw sent a memo to the prime minister days before the conflict broke out in March, urging him to tell US President George W. Bush that Britain would offer moral and political support, but no combat troops.

But Blair rejected the advice, and demanded an assurance that Straw would support the war despite his reservations, says the book by political journalist John Kampfner, entitled "Blair's Wars", to be published on September 22.

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

Neither the Foreign Office nor Blair's office would make any comment on the claim, saying only: "We have nothing to say about that."

Straw is one of Blair's most loyal allies and was one of the staunchest supporters of the Iraq war in public, regularly appearing before the cameras to argue that it was the right course to take.

According to excerpts in the right-wing Mail on Sunday, Kampfner's book also alleges that Blair had secretly agreed to go to war as early as April 2002, when he had a summit with Bush at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

And it claims that Blair himself had doubts about intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which formed the basis of his justification for war, and had received evidence that Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons capability was actually diminishing.

According to Kampfner, Straw confronted the prime minister on his return from an eve-of-war summit with Bush in the Azores on March 16.