Blair, Bush under pressure for Iraq intelligence inquiries

Most Britons want an independent inquiry into the intelligence Prime Minister Tony Blair cited as the justification to launch a pre-emptive war on Iraq alongside the United States last year, new polls showed yesterday.

The public sentiment mirrors pressure on US President George W. Bush to launch a similar inquiry after a former chief weapons inspector refuted pre-war intelligence which asserted that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons programme and posed an imminent threat.

Polls in The Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times showed 61 per cent and 54 per cent of the British public respectively wanted an investigation into London's much-criticised evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The figures give added momentum to calls from British opposition politicians and anti-war protesters for an inquiry into evidence flaunted by Mr Blair's government as justification to send British troops to join in the US-led attack on Iraq.

"There will be a mounting clamour, particularly given events in Washington over the past few days... that we really need a searching examination into the entire basis on which this government took us into that war," Charles Kennedy, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, told Sky television.

Opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard said he would this week table a parliamentary motion urging an inquiry.

"It is of utmost importance that we try to find out what went wrong with the intelligence," he told the Sunday Telegraph.

While sources in Washington suggested Mr Bush may be leaning towards endorsing an intelligence inquiry, Mr Blair's government is resisting, saying the intelligence he had was valid at the time.

The White House and key congressional leaders yesterday negotiated details of an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures before the Iraq war and a senior Democrat said the probe should include whether decision-makers misused information.

President George W. Bush, who had earlier opposed such a commission, was under strong pressure from members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, to support an independent probe into intelligence that said Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons when in fact none have been found.

The weapons issue was the main reason cited by Mr Bush for the war, in which more than 500 US troops have now died.

"I understand that they are looking at the situation and want to get the whole story," Mississippi Republican Senator Trent Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday.

Mr Bush was expected to make a final decision soon on the intelligence inquiry, according to sources familiar with discussions the White House has been having with congressional officials. An announcement was expected soon.

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's vice chairman, said the probe had to get under way before the November election and should include how the intelligence was used by those who decided to go to war.

"It has to have that included. And that is still not settled," he said.

Mr Bush had earlier rejected an independent probe amid White House fears of a political witch hunt by Democrats hoping to unseat him in this year's presidential election, but began in recent days to reconsider the position given the bipartisan pressure for an investigation.

"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Mr Bush told reporters on Friday.