IRAQ INQUIRY: Tony Blair should be IMPEACHED by report into conflict, Alex Salmond says

THE long-awaited inquiry into the Iraq War should "impeach" Tony Blair, Alex Salmond has said.

Sir John Chilcot's report on the conflict is due to be published this summer, seven years after it was commissioned.

And former SNP leader Salmond last night alleged that Blair took the UK to war to honour a commitment made to George Bush.

He added that Blair should be "held to account" if the inquiry puts forward the same claim about the ex-Prime Minister.

Salmond said: "I believe that Prime Minister Blair pre-committed himself to war.

"There was a pre-commitment that he would go, with George Bush into Iraq, come what may."

The commitment may have been made during a 2002 visit to the then President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Salmond added.

Salmond went on: "If Chilcot identifies that, then the person who would take responsibility is the then Prime Minister, if there's a body of evidence.

"Now what we have to see is whether Chilcot provides that body of evidence. You know, I want it to impeach the [then] Prime Minister in Parliament."

The ex-First Minister said he believed the families of those killed in the Iraq war would agree with him.

The report, which is four times the length of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, will be published on July 6.

Blair last year denied he was responsible for the hold-ups in the publication of the report, which was commissioned in 2009.

Critics have long suspected the ex-Labour leader of wanting to spin out the investigation in which he is expected to be criticised.