LONDON: Leaked British government documents call into question ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's public statements on the build-up to the Iraq war and show plans for the US-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier, a newspaper reported yesterday.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph published details of private statements made by senior military figures claiming plans were in place months before the March 2003 invasion, but were so badly drafted they left troops poorly equipped and ill-prepared for the conflict.

The documents - transcripts of interviews from an internal defense ministry review of the conflict - disclose that some planning for the Iraq war had begun in February 2002. Major General Graeme Lamb, then head of Britain's special forces, was quoted as saying he had been "working the war up since early 2002", according to the newspaper.