Blair orders WMD inquiry

Prime Minister Tony Blair bowed to pressure yesterday for an inquiry into the quality of British intelligence on banned Iraqi weapons, but his opponents said its terms were so narrow it would let the government off the hook.

Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats, said they would take no part in the investigation after Mr Blair refused to allow it to probe the politics behind the decision to wage war.

Instead, it will focus exclusively on problems with the information gleaned by spies.

"I think it is right... that we have a look at the intelligence that we received and whether it was accurate or not," Mr Blair told a parliamentary committee. "We do not in my view need an inquiry into the political decision to go to war."

Until now, Mr Blair has firmly resisted calls for an inquiry.

But pressure has increased relentlessly as nearly 10 months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, no biological or chemical weapons - the reasons Mr Blair gave for war - have been found.

Prior to the war, he said Iraq posed a "serious and current" threat and that it had continued to produce banned weapons.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament the inquiry, headed by former chief civil servant Lord Butler, would report by July, well before next year's expected election.

It will hear from witnesses in private and investigate the accuracy of intelligence on Iraq's weapons and examine any discrepancies between it and what has been discovered since the end of the conflict.

The government line, until now, that evidence of banned weapons could yet be found had proved increasingly hard to sustain since chief US weapons hunter David Kay quit his post, saying he believed Iraq had no stockpiles of illicit weapons.

"The government recognises there are... entirely legitimate concerns about the reliability of the original intelligence which have been heightened by Dr Kay's evidence," Straw said.

President George W. Bush's decision on Monday to set up an independent commission on US intelligence turned up the heat on Britain to do the same, although Mr Blair denied being wrong-footed by Washington.

Conservative foreign affairs spokesman Michael Ancram said Mr Blair had performed a "spectacular U-turn".

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has dealt a major blow to Mr Blair's credibility with the British public. The new inquiry will frustrate his attempts to draw a line under the most torrid period of his nearly seven years in power but appears unlikely to unearth further damaging facts for him.

Critics say the government is preparing to heap blame on its intelligence services but that it would cut no ice with sceptical Britons.

"There is now widespread public disbelief about the stated reasons for our participation in the war in Iraq. That disbelief is undermining public trust in the office of the prime minister," Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said.