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Tony Blair sidesteps call for Iraq note release

TONY BLAIR ducked calls yesterday for him to sanction the release of his exchanges with former US president George Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The tight-lipped former prime minister said questions about the Chilcot inquiry were “for another day” as he was grilled by reporters after a speech on Europe.

Campaigners have criticised as a whitewash the decision to limit publication to “quotes or gists.” The mother of one soldier killed in the conflict has also lambasted Mr Blair.

Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said she was “sickened” by the decision to only publish selected sections and believed Mr Blair would “walk away from it with a smile on his face.”

Negotiations over the publication of the “vital” material, which includes 25 notes from Mr Blair to the then US president and more than 130 records of conversations between them, is understood to have been behind long delays in publication of the report into the invasion.

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