Quote of note:

The White House declined to comment, saying that any telephone conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair at that time would have been private and personal. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington also declined to comment.

Bush Cited 2 Allies Over Arms, Book Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 - Two months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush told Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq" in dealing with the spread of illicit weapons and mentioned Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on a list of countries posing particular problems, according to notes taken by one of Mr. Blair's advisers cited in a new book.

Mr. Bush's comment, in a private telephone conversation on Jan. 30, 2003, could be significant because it appeared to add Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to a list that previously had included public mentions only of Iraq,Iran and North Korea, which the president had called an "axis of evil."

The comment is reported in an American edition of "Lawless World," by Philippe Sands, a professor at University College, London, and a practicing lawyer. An earlier edition of the book, published in Britain in February, included details from other prewar British government documents, but it did not include the detail from the Jan. 30 conversation. The British government has not questioned the authenticity of the documents described in the book.

The contents of a Jan. 30 document describing the conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair have been reviewed by The New York Times. It shows that the notes were taken by Matthew Rycroft, then the private secretary to Mr. Blair, and addressed to Simon McDonald, then the principal private secretary to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw. The contents show that the document was marked secret and personal and said it "must only be shown to those with a real need to know."