A claim that the British parliament and public may have been duped into believing Iraq's alleged lethal weapons posed an imminent danger is threatening to overshadow Tony Blair's visit to Iraq.
An unnamed senior British official, quoted by the BBC, said that a dossier compiled by British intelligence services had been altered on the request of Blair's Downing Street office to make it "sexier", by adding a statement that Saddam's weapons could be ready for use within 45 minutes.
Downing Street denied the claim, saying the dossier wasentirely the work of intelligence agencies.
The report wasseized on by some anti-war legislators who called for an inquiryinto the evidence given to them on Saddam's weapons.
Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said the "45-minute"statement came from a single intelligence source while otherinformation had been corroborated with a number of sources.
But Ingram said progress was being made on the arms hunt.
"The jigsaw is now beginning to come into place," he toldBBC Radio.
On Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in aneffort to explain why no such weapons had been found, said Iraqmay have destroyed them before the US-led invasion in March.
Robin Cook, a former British foreign secretary who resigned from the cabinet in protest over the war, suggested late yesterday that a parliamentary committee should investigate the validity of intelligence reports on Saddam's alleged arms.
"Saying they can't find the weapons, and they may never findthe weapons, blows an enormous gaping hole through the case forwar that was made on both sides of the Atlantic," Cook toldChannel 4 News. "That has to be investigated."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Blair has become the first Western leader to visit Iraq since the end of the conflict that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Mr Blair arrived in the southern city of Basra for a short visit to thank British troops controlling the area and to give his support to reconstruction efforts.