Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, said the West had “a moral responsibility” to avoid a war in which thousands of civilians would be killed and called for “a policy that offers Iraq a positive incentive to comply with the demands of the (United Nations) Security Council”.

He was supported by the Church’s Bishop of the Forces, Monsignor Tom Burns — the leader of Catholics in the Army, Royal Navy and RAF — who said there was a danger that unless all realistic alternatives were explored, British troops sent to war with Iraq would not be risking their lives for a just cause.

“I want to be able to reassure my people that they will only be asked to fight for values that are important and unassailable,” he said. “If we go to war, and body bags return to this country, I want to be able to look bereaved families in the eye and reply ‘Yes’ unhesitatingly when they ask me whether their loved ones died for a just cause.

“When they ask whether the sacrifice was worth it, I want to be able to reply that it was. At present, I would not be able to do that because we have not reached the point of last resort.”

Both men were speaking after the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, meeting in Leeds, issued a statement that recognised last week’s UN resolution as “the legitimate expression of the international community’s collective determination to disarm Iraq” but urged Western leaders “to pursue alternatives to war before it is too late”. War against Iraq could not be justified, they said, unless “in the face of a grave and imminent threat” there was no other way to achieve the disarmament of Saddam’s regime.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said that the dossier on Iraq published by the Prime Minister in September had fallen some way short of convincing the bishops that such a threat existed.

Offering Saddam a reward for genuine disarmament through “the lifting of comprehensive sanctions and the reintegration of Iraq into the international community” was “a way forward that must now be fully explored”. He said: “What we are offering to Mr Bush and Mr Blair is an alternative route. Sanctions have not worked. They have imposed a decade of misery on ordinary people while allowing an exploitative regime to sustain itself in power.”

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