‘Culture of secrecy prevents truth about Iraq’, Sir Jeremy Greenstock.

The Foreign Office has effectively killed the publication of a controversial fly-on-the wall memoir of the Iraq war by one of Britain’s most senior diplomats, which would have called the conflict ‘politically illegitimate’.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations during the preparations for war in 2003 and the Prime Minister’s envoy to Iraq following the war, has been blocked in his effort to reveal ‘certain truths’ about the conflict. He was uniquely well-placed to provide the inside story of the conflict and its aftermath.

But this weekend his publishers in Britain and America were set to pull the plug on the book after the Foreign Office demanded drastic cuts and the removal of references to conversations between Greenstock and the major players in the conflict, including Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw.