BRITISH government ministers discussed plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves in the months before Britain took a leading role in invading the country, sensational new documents have revealed.

The secret papers, obtained by an oil campaigner and published by The Independent newspaper, are minutes of meetings between senior oil executives and Labour cabinet members. They highlight for the first time the hollow nature of Western governments' denials of national self-interest in the decision to invade Iraq.

The documents, which have not been provided to the ongoing Chilcot inquiry into Britain's involvement, appear to contradict statements made by Shell in 2003 - just before the invasion - that reports of meetings between the company and Downing Street about Iraqi oil were ''highly inaccurate''.

BP had also denied it had any ''strategic interest'' in Iraq, while former prime minister Tony Blair dismissed as absurd what he described as ''the oil conspiracy theory''.

But papers published by the newspaper, covering October and November 2002, show that just five months before the invasion, Baroness Symons, then the trade minister, told BP that the government believed British energy firms should take a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for the country's military commitment to US plans for regime change.