BRITAIN: A defiant Mr Tony Blair is resisting demands for an independent inquiry into allegations that he, his office and other ministers exaggerated secret intelligence reports to justify the war against Iraq, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
In the Commons today, Mr Blair is expected to confirm that parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee will investigate the question of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
However, not least because that committee of senior MPs and peers is directly answerable to Mr Blair himself, this is unlikely to satisfy the growing number of Labour MPs demanding a full-scale probe into pre-war claims about Iraq's weapons capability.
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee announced last night it was setting up an inquiry into the decision to go to war in Iraq, but this will not satisfy demands for an independent inquiry.
Mr Blair faces a grilling from MPs on the failure of allied forces thus far to uncover evidence of Iraqi WMD, which Mr Blair claimed posed "a real and present danger" to Britain and justified the allied invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.
Following Ms Clare Short's explosive charge that Mr Blair had effectively lied to his Cabinet and "duped" the nation with the use of political "spin . . . on the intelligence to create a sense of urgency", a former Labour Chancellor, Lord Healey, yesterday said he believed the British and American governments had "twisted" evidence put forward by their intelligence agencies.
That was flatly rejected by Mr Blair's official spokesman, who maintained the evidence currently being gathered in Iraq would eventually support the original assessment of the threat posed by Saddam's weapons programmes and who insisted the members of the Joint Intelligence Committee were "100 per cent" with Mr Blair.
However, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, yesterday joined the growing cast of those demanding a "clear the air" inquiry into the government's assessment, handling and presentation of intelligence material.
This included the assertion made by Mr Blair in the House of Commons last September that Saddam had "existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes".
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Mr Charles Kennedy, called for the appointment of a special Commons select committee, with full access to all the intelligence material and the power to call Mr Blair, the man with ultimate responsibility for the security services.
Mr Kennedy said the war was "probably the biggest issue for almost a generation" and one on which "parliament must be seen to assert itself". Mr Kennedy told the BBC's Today programme: "I suspect that in presentational terms, Number 10 has gone for the most arresting presentation of the facts but that may in itself have had the very, very unfortunate effect of misleading certain people and therefore skewing votes [in the Commons] that were of such huge importance on the day."
The Conservative leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, entered the fray last night, writing to Mr Blair with five questions he said should be answered urgently in the Commons.
While not ruling out possible support for a fuller inquiry later, the Conservative shadow foreign secretary, Mr Michael Ancram, said Mr Blair must answer allegations which were damaging to the reconstruction effort in Iraq and which struck at "the heart of the integrity of both the government and the intelligence services".