GOVERNMENT prosecutors are considering whether to charge the former Labour defence minister Peter Kilfoyle after the leaking of a top-secret memo on the Iraq war.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said this weekend that it was considering police files on Kilfoyle, the Liverpool Walton MP, over the alleged disclosure of the memo, which was a record of a conversation between Tony Blair and George Bush.

Westminster legal sources revealed that Kilfoyle and Tony Clarke, the former Labour MP for Northampton South, had been questioned under caution by Scotland Yard special branch detectives about alleged breaches of the Official Secrets Act.

The memo is said to summarise a discussion at the White House in April 2004 between Blair and Bush during the American assault on the city of Falluja. In the meeting, Bush is said to have raised the prospect of bombing the Al-Jazeera television station in Qatar.

Blair is said to have argued against the plan. Reports at the time indicated that he was apparently supported by Colin Powell, the then US secretary of state. Downing Street later said it had “no record” of a discussion to carry out such a bombing.

The meeting took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers and British military commanders were privately expressing strong concerns at the scale of the attack on Falluja, in which up to 1,000 Iraqi citizens were feared to have been killed. Pictures of the assault had infuriated American generals. The government was also arguing with the White House about the numbers of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq.

The leaked memo is considered so sensitive that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, threatened to prosecute newspapers under the Official Secrets Act just for referring to it.

Antiwar MPs and lawyers said the threat was made because of the political embarrassment that would be caused by the leak.

David Keogh, a former Cabinet Office communications specialist, has been charged under sections three and five of the Official Secrets Act with sending the memo to Leo O’Con-nor, a researcher for Clarke. Both men face trial at the Old Bailey later this year.

Kilfoyle served as a minister under Blair for three years until 2000, resigning as parliamentary under secretary of state at the Ministry of Defence amid reports that he was disillusioned with the direction the Blair government was taking.

He has since become an increasingly vocal critic of the prime minister and has called on Blair to stand down early so the Labour party can get on with the business of running the country.

Kilfoyle, an arch-critic of the Iraq war, has sponsored at least two motions in the Commons calling on Blair to publish the secret memo.

The CPS said a file on the two men had been passed to them last year and that senior lawyers were in the final stages of consulting on whether to press charges. “A decision on Kilfoyle and Clarke is expected soon,” a spokesman said.

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