Chilcot Report: Blame To Extend 'Beyond Blair'

Sir John Chilcot is to apportion blame for Britain's role in the Iraq war much more widely than had been expected, it is being reported.

Criticism will extend well beyond Tony Blair and his inner circle, sources involved with the six-year inquiry have told The Guardian.

The wide circle of people facing criticism is one of the reasons for the delay - widely condemned by leading politicians and relatives of those killed in Iraq - in publishing the report, the newspaper suggests.

Every individual criticised is being sent draft passages giving them an opportunity to comment.

Some of those who have received drafts are reported to have expressed surprise, having regarded themselves as peripheral to the events leading up to the invasion.

Sir John wants to ensure that those criticised are given every opportunity to reply.

He does not want to give them an excuse to take legal action or attack the inquiry after the final report has been published.

While Mr Blair will bear the brunt of the report's criticism, one source told The Guardian it would suit the former prime minister to see a wide range of targets blamed when it is published.

It had been assumed that Sir John would concentrate on Mr Blair and his closest advisers in Downing Street.

However, The Guardian says it understands the inquiry intends to criticise a much bigger circle of ministers and officials, including Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the invasion in 2003.

Others in focus are Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Geoff Hoon, who was defence secretary, Clare Short, who was international development secretary, and senior officials in the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office.

The Chilcot inquiry has come under increased pressure over the last few weeks to publish the report.

The inquiry was set up by Gordon Brown in 2009, with hearings completed in 2011, but has been beset by repeated delays.

David Cameron expressed frustration last week over failure to complete the report and politicians from the former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott to Liam Fox on the Tory right have condemned the delay.

The main focus of the inquiry is on the events leading up to the 2003 invasion, in particular questions about the legality of military action, faulty intelligence and whether Mr Blair gave an early undertaking to the then US president, George W Bush, to support the US-led invasion.

Senior military figures told the inquiry they were given insufficient time to prepare for the war for political reasons, mainly because the Government did not want to admit that the invasion was almost certain to go ahead.

Military commanders were among the most outspoken witnesses to the inquiry, strongly criticising the failures of Whitehall decision makers.

Admiral Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff at the time of the invasion, told the inquiry: "I suspect if I asked half the Cabinet were we at war, they would not have known what I was talking about.

"There was a lack of political cohesion at the top."

Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney general, told the inquiry how Mr Blair shut him out of discussions.

The inquiry also heard that Mr Straw dismissed the view of lawyers in the Foreign Office that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal.

Sir John was angry over delays by the Cabinet Office in reaching agreement on publication of Blair-Bush correspondence, which he described as key evidence that is "vital to the public understanding of the inquiry's conclusions".