But Blair added that it would not have been "sustainable" for Britain to join the campaign against Saddam Hussein led by the United States if the parliament in London voted against it.

"I decided that we couldn't avoid conflict in the few days before the vote on the 18th of March, because it was then that it was obvious we couldn't get a second UN resolution that delivered an ultimatum to Saddam," Blair told a committee of senior British deputies.

"Once other countries had made it clear they were not prepared to support a resolution with an ultimatum in it, all we were going to get was a further condemnation of Saddam and an agreement to have another discussion. That wasn't enough."

March 18 was the date when Blair won backing from the British parliament for a military campaign. Two days later the war on Iraq was launched.

Blair told deputies: "I have never thought it was realistic for British troops to go to war if parliament voted against it. I don't think it would have been sustainable.

"We had to persuade the Cabinet, then we had to persuade parliament. If at any one of those stages opposite decisions had been taken, it wouldn't have happened."

The prime minister insisted he had always wanted to resolve the Iraq crisis peacefully.

"Up until that point (March 18) I was still working to avoid the conflict. I very nearly had and believed I would have secured the necessary votes in the UN to have got effectively an ultimatum to Saddam and that could still have avoided the conflict.

"All the way through I had in my mind an attempt, if at all possible, to do this peacefully."

Blair added: "We made an agreement under (UN resolution) 1441 that disarmament had to happen one way or another, that the inspectors had to have the full co-operation of Saddam and he never gave that."

WAR.WIRE