Blame Blair for the bloodshed in Iraq, says ex-Defence Secretary Hoon

He listed a catalogue of errors that has led to continuing sectarian bloodshed four years after the invasion.

The Prime Minister and his senior ministers were unable to influence key U.S. figures including Vice President Dick Cheney, said Mr Hoon, who was Defence Secretary at the time of the invasion in March 2003.

While Mr Blair claimed a special relationship with the U.S., it appeared to carry little weight in Washington.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Hoon said the Government could not stop the U.S. from disbanding Iraq's army and ridding the civil service of members of Saddam Hussein's ruling party.

He said sacking the Iraqi army was catastrophic because it allowed "Saddam's people to link up with Al Qaeda and to link up ultimately with Sunni insurgents."

These partnerships eventually fuelled suicide attacks and sectarian violence.

Mr Hoon, demoted to Europe Minister by Mr Blair a year ago, said: "We didn't plan for the right sort of aftermath. Maybe we were too optimistic about the idea of the streets being lined with cheering people.

"Although I have reconciled it in my own mind, we perhaps didn't do enough to see it through the Sunni perspective.

"Perhaps we should have done more to understand their position."

The Minister suggested the UKU.S. coalition should have predicted an outbreak of Sunni-Shia violence, admitting: "Given what we know now, I suppose the answer is that we should, but we did not know that at the time."

Mr Hoon added: "Sometimes...Tony had made his point with the President, and I'd made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place.

"And you think: What did we miss? I think we missed Cheney."

He regrets the Government's claim in the run-up to war that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, which he now accepts was false.

Mr Hoon added: "I saw intelligence from the first time I came into office, in May 1999 - week in, week out - that said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

"I have real difficulty in understanding why it was, over such a long period, we were told this and, moreover, why we acted upon it."

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said that in view of Mr Hoon's remarks it was time for the Prime Minister to shoulder the blame for the postwar calamity.

"Now that the former Defence Secretary has admitted there were serious errors in planning for postwar Iraq, who takes responsibility for that failure?

"Isn't it clear where responsibility lies? The President made the decisions, the Prime Minister argued the case, the Chancellor signed the cheques and the Tories voted it through.

"That is where the responsibility for Iraq is to be found," said Mr Campbell.

Later the Prime Minister said: 'The responsibility for everything to do with the conduct of the Iraq war is taken by the Government.

"The points he (Mr Hoon) was making - about de-Ba'athification, about the disbandment of the Iraqi army - are points I myself have made before."