LONDON, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said British Prime Minister Tony Blair's justification for the United States-led war against Iraq has begun to appear "palpably absurd".

　　In an article published on Friday in the British Independent newspape r, Cook wrote, "In March Tony Blair dismissed the claim that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction as 'palpably absurd'. This week it was admitted that his government now accepts that claim is true. It is the justification for war that begins to look 'palpably absurd'."

　　"We were assumed that (former Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein) has weapons of mass destruction and he had some of them ready for use in the next 45 minutes," Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons in protest of Blair's Iraq policy, said in the article.

　　"If we are told that those assurances are now ...inoperative, then the need for urgency crumbles and the case for war that was built upon it collapses," Cook said.

　　"An urgent threat demanded that there must be real weapons ...No weapons of mass destruction, no justification for war," Cook argued.

　　"I predict that we will soon see determined efforts to shift the justification for war to regime change rather than disarmament, " Cook wrote. "This was a war made in Washington, pushed by a handful of neo-conservatives and pursued for reasons of US foreign strategy and domestic politics."

　　Cook's comments came as Blair still insists that he has absolutely no doubt at all that the coalition would find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programs.

　　The United States and Britain launched war against Iraq on the grounds that Iraq's alleged banned weapons posed a serious threat, but the failure so far to find those weapons in the country has caused a turmoil over the case made for war. End