Hoon had fears over Iraq commitment

Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon feared the armed forces would struggle to cope with commitment of a full scale land force to Iraq, he has disclosed.

Giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry, he said he had regarded the deployment of a full division to Iraq as a "big ask" for the Army at a time when British troops were already committed in Afghanistan.

The inquiry also heard that he initially wanted to offer a more limited military "package" in the form of air and naval support for a US invasion, but that his instructions were overruled.

Mr Hoon said that he had written to Prime Minister Tony Blair in the build up to the invasion in March 2003 warning him that Iran actually represented a greater threat to British interests than Iraq.

However, he said Mr Blair had not even briefed him on his crucial talks with George Bush at the US President's Texas ranch at Crawford in April 2002.

And he said that he had been unaware of a series of private notes sent by Mr Blair to Mr Bush in which - according to earlier evidence by former No 10 communications chief Alastair Campbell - he assured him that Britain would "be there" if it came to war.

Although the issue of military intervention came up at the Crawford talks, Mr Hoon said that at no stage did Mr Blair discuss with him what actually was said.

While he was copied into "round robin" letters setting out Mr Blair's position in the period before the invasion, he said that he did not see the private memos to Mr Bush.

"The Prime Minister was a great note-writer and it would not surprise me at all that there were private notes that he would send to the President, moreover that he would have had private conversations with the President that I would not necessarily have been privy to," he said.

Following the Crawford meeting, British military planners had begun drawing up possible options for UK involvement in an invasion of Iraq, ranging from granting US forces access to British bases such as Diego Garcia, to naval and air support, to a full scale land deployment.