FORMER permanent secretary of the Northern Ireland Office Sir John Chilcot has died aged 82.
The civil servant, who led an inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, passed away as a result of kidney disease.
His Iraq Inquiry took seven years to publish findings that said there had been no imminent threat from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain when the US invasion, supported by the UK under Prime Minister Tony Blair, began in 2003.
Chilcot, who is survived by wife Rosalind, played a major role at the NIO from 1990 to 1997 as permanent secretary.
While in the post, it was revealed by the former head of MI5 in Belfast, that Chilcot had received a message from Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness in 1993, stating: "The war is over but we need your advice on how to bring it to a close."
He went on to advise John Major.
Niall Ó Dochartaigh, NUI Galway professor and author of book Deniable Contact: Back-channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland, said: "In his own understated way John Chilcot was probably the single most important driver of the Northern Ireland peace process in the crucial early years."