'Bush sought Blair's backing for removing Saddam after 9/11'

Bush's approach came at a private White House dinner with Blair, said the Observer, which quoted Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, who was at the meal.

The paper cited Meyer as saying that Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the initial goal of the "war on terror" -- dealing with the then Taliban regime and the al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan.

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According to Meyer, Bush replied by saying: "I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq."

It was clear, Meyer said, "that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions".

Meyer also said Blair always believed it was unlikely that Saddam would be removed from power or give up weapons of mass destruction without a war.

Faced with the prospect of a further war, Blair "said nothing to demur", according to Meyer.

The Observer said that details of the conversation would be published this week in a 25,000-word article on the path to war with Iraq in the May issue of the US magazine Vanity Fair.

According to the British paper, the discussion implies that, even before the bombing of Afghanistan, Blair already knew that the United States intended to attack Saddam next, although he continued to insist in public that no decisions had been taken until almost the moment that the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.