Parliamentary body rebukes Blair govt on Iraq dossier

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the dossier, published in September, gave undue prominence to a claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order.

It said the language used in the dossier was "more assertive than that traditionally used in intelligence documents."

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

The cross-party committee also said Blair misrepresented to lawmakers the status of another dossier on Iraqi arms, published in January, which included material copied from a graduate thesis posted on the Internet.

The committee said that it was "wholly unacceptable" for the government to plagiarize work without attribution, as happened with the January dossier.

"We further conclude that by referring to the document on the floor of the House (of Commons) as 'further intelligence,' the prime minister - who had not been informed of its provenance, doubts about which only came to light several days later - misrepresented its status," the committee's report said.

The September dossier has become the focus of a bitter dispute between the government and the British Broadcasting Corp., which quoted an unidentified intelligence source as claiming Blair aides redrafted the dossier to include the 45-minute claim and boost the case for war. Blair has described the BBC report as "absurd," while communications chief Alastair Campbell said it was a lie.

The Foreign Affairs Committee, which questioned Campbell, said the powerful communications chief "did not exert or seek to exert improper influence" in including the 45-minute claim in the September document.

That verdict was only reached after the committee chairman, ruling Labor Party lawmaker Donald Anderson, used his tie-breaking power as chair to exonerate Campbell.

However, the report said it was wrong for Campbell - an unelected special adviser hired outside the civil service system - to have chaired a meeting on intelligence matters, and said the practice should cease. Campbell wasn't named in the original BBC report as having inserted the 45-minute claim. But a subsequent Mail on Sunday newspaper article by the BBC reporter, which was based on the same intelligence source, identified Campbell.

The government has acknowledged that the 45-minute claim was based on a single source, which it considered reliable. The committee urged the government to explain why it gave the claim such prominence, given that the source was uncorroborated, and asked officials to say whether they still believed the claim had been accurate.

The failure to find banned arms since Saddam's ouster has raised questions about the intelligence Blair used to persuade skeptical lawmakers to back military intervention. The prime minister had made the threat posed by Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs the backbone of his case for war.