The Guardian.
Friday April 25, 2003.

Tony Blair took repeated secret advice from the former American president Bill Clinton on how to unlock the diplomatic impasse between Europe and the US in the build-up to the war on Iraq, the Guardian can reveal.

In the crucial weekend before to the final breakdown of diplomacy in March, Mr Clinton was a guest of Mr Blair's at Chequers where the pair discussed the crisis.

Mr Blair was battling to persuade the Chilean president Ricardo Lagos - a key figure on the security council - to back a second UN resolution setting a new deadline for Saddam to cooperate fully with the UN or face military action.

Three days after his Chequers meeting, Mr Clinton made a rare public appeal to his successor, George Bush, to give the UN weapons inspectors more time.

Mr Blair and Mr Clinton met at least three times to discuss the war, underlining the extent to which Mr Blair rates Mr Clinton's analytical powers, despite the bond of trust he has also formed with the Republican White House.

The two men met on the weekend of March 8, the weekend during which Clare Short, the international development secretary, exploded a grenade by accusing the prime minister of running a reckless policy towards Iraq.

In a speech in Washington three days later Mr Clinton said the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, should set the timetable for compliance, adding: "I hope the United States would agree to that amount of time, whatever it is".

Mr Clinton was careful to say that Mr Bush was sincere in his pursuit of UN support, but added: "The question is, do they want the support bad enough to let Mr Blix finish his work and give enough time to do that?"

At that point, Mr Blair had been pressing the US in private to extend a deadline by which Saddam would have to shown to be cooperating with the UN.

Mr Blair and Mr Clinton had a warm, mutually supportive relationship during the latter's presidency. After the election of Mr Bush, Downing Street aides were anxious to maintain the "special relationship" between the US and the UK. Private polling for No 10 during the build-up to war showed hostility towards Mr Bush among British voters and Labour MPs, who disliked his language and manner.

At the time of Mr Clinton's private visit to Chequers, Mr Blair was very close to winning the agreement of the Chileans to British proposals.

The prime minister was so desperate to secure Chilean support that he told Mr Lagos that he was prepared to make the 7,230-mile journey to Santiago to clinch the support of the first centre-left leader of Chile since Salvador Allende.

In practice, Mr Blair would not have made the 35-hour round trip unless he could be sure that he would not be returning empty-handed and humiliated.

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had also expressed a willingness to travel to Chile, hoping that his earlier decision to arrest General Augusto Pinochet had given him some personal influence in the former dictator's country.

British efforts to secure a deal were scuppered when the French president, Jacques Chirac, gave a television interview saying he would veto a resolution authorising war whatever the circumstances.

Mr Blair followed up the interview with a private call to Mr Chirac, in which the French president said he would not tolerate any resolution that contained an ultimatum to Saddam.

Commenting on Mr Chirac's television performance, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told the Guardian: "He blew it. If he had said 'let's look at it again in two months time', we would have been in much greater difficulty".

