Days before UK-backed Iraq invasion, Britain had learned that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction might have been unusable, a top official told a public inquiry.

Speaking on the second day of a public inquiry into Britain's role in the orchestration of the Iraq war, senior civil servant William Ehrman said that "in the very final days before military action", Britain knew that some Iraqi weapons may not have been assembled.

According to the evidence of the witnesses , the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could not issue the order of a strike with WMDs in 45 minutes and there was limited contact between the Iraqi leaders and al-Qaeda.

"We were getting in the very final days before military action
some (intelligence) on chemical and biological weapons that it was
dismantled and (Iraq) might not have the munitions to deliver it," Ehrman, the Foreign Office's then director of international security added.

The latest inquiry which commenced on Tuesday has been designed to examine why Britain joined the US-led invasion in 2003, and to look at whether it was even legal.

The five-member British inquiry team expects to question dozens of officials during the year-long inquiry, including then British prime minister Tony Blair who backed US President George W. Bush to launch the offensive against Iraq.

Anti-war activists and relatives of the British fallen soldiers have long argued that the government used distorted intelligence, including unsubstantiated claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, to justify the invasion.

AO/AKM