William Patey, head of the Foreign Office's Middle East department at the time, told the hearing that in February 2001 "we were aware of these drumbeats in Washington, and internally we discussed it. Our policy was to stay away from that."

"We didn't think that Saddam [Hussein] was a good thing and it would be great if he went," he said, "but we didn't have a policy for getting rid of him."

The inquiry is probing the decision of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's government to join the U.S.-led war that toppled Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, in 2003. The six-member panel will interview policymakers, secret service chiefs, military commanders, and relatives of soldiers who died in the war. Blair is scheduled to appear in January.

The former prime minister's decision to take Britain to war, in part to dismantle alleged weapons of mass destruction that were never found, was controversial in 2003 and steadily lost support among the British public. The panel is expected to look into long-standing accusations that his government skewed intelligence reports to justify going to war.

As the probe opened yesterday in a conference center in central London, a small group of protesters dressed as Blair, former President George W. Bush, and current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gathered outside. Some demonstrators waved placards that declared "blood on your hands" and "no more whitewash," the latter a reference to previous inquiries that ended by declaring the war was justified.

As he opened the proceedings, chairman John Chilcot emphasized that no one would be put on trial and that his panel would not "determine guilt or innocence . . . but we will not shy away from making criticisms where they are warranted.

"We are apolitical and independent of any political party," he added. "We want to examine the evidence. We will approach our task in a way that is thorough, rigorous, fair, and frank."

The committee began yesterday by examining British policy toward Iraq and Britain's relationship with the United States on the issue just before and after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The first three witnesses were Defense Ministry or Foreign Office officials with the Blair government at that time.

All three officials said it was not part of British or U.S. policy through 2001 to seek to bring down Hussein and his government. But Peter Ricketts, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in 2001, said the Blair government was aware that there were U.S. voices calling for regime change.

He cited an article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Condoleezza Rice, written before she became a leading figure in the Bush administration, declaring that "nothing will change in Iraq" with Hussein in power.

Simon Webb, a policy director at the Ministry of Defense in 2001, said there were discussions in Washington on Iraq regime change in March 2001, "but it was quite clear there was no proposition being put in our direction on that."

Patey noted that British policy in 2001 consisted of supporting sanctions, weapons embargoes, and "no-fly" zones instituted after the 1991 gulf war as a means of forcing Hussein to allow international inspectors into his weapons facilities.

After the 9/11 attacks there was a different "tone" in Washington, said Ricketts, who became the Foreign Offices director-general of political affairs the same month as the terrorist assault. He cited wavering U.S. support for sanctions as a means of bringing about change in Iraq, including his view that the Bush administration believed any international inspectors who did get in would be "hoodwinked" by Hussein.

Google's Window on the Past

Google is documenting Iraq's national museum and

will post photographs of its ancient treasures on the Internet early next year, Google chief Eric Schmidt announced yesterday.

The museum was ransacked in the chaotic aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster in April 2003, and only reopened to visitors early this year.

Schmidt, who toured the museum with U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill yesterday, said it was important for the world to see Iraq's rich heritage and contribution to world culture.

Schmidt said that Google had taken about 14,000 photographs of the museum and its artifacts and that the images would be available online in early 2010.

The museum was among many institutions, including universities, hospitals, libraries, and art galleries, that were looted or set ablaze across Iraq in the days and weeks that followed Hussein's ouster.

The museum holds artifacts from the Stone Age through the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic periods. The richness of its collection and its importance as a caretaker of the relics of early civilization triggered an outcry around the world.

- Associated Press