Iraq inquiry: Private USA/UK Iraq talks at George Bush's ranch

Private discussions at George Bush's Texas ranch in 2002 may have led Tony Blair and the US president to agree Iraq needed a "regime change", the Iraq Inquiry has heard.

Britain's US ambassador between 1997 and 2003, Sir Christopher Meyer, said in evidence the two leaders appeared to change their stance after meeting without advisers for "a large chunk of time" in Crawford.

"I know what the Cabinet Office says were the results of the meeting but to this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch," he said.

Sir Christopher said the next day Mr Blair gave a speech indicating a "tightened" US/UK alliance  and "a degree of convergence on the danger Saddam Hussein presented".

"To the best of my knowledge, I might be wrong, this was the first time that Tony Blair had said in public 'regime change'" he said.

"What he was trying to do was to draw the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq, which led - I think not inadvertently but deliberately - to a conflation of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein."

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