'Key British claim on Iraq weapons was hearsay'

The left-wing daily said the revelation that the 45-minute assertion was hearsay was contained in an internal Foreign Office document released to a judicial inquiry probing the suspected suicide of a government arms expert at the centre of a row of how Britain went to war.

Senior judge Lord Hutton is leading an investigation probing the circumstances leading up to the death of scientist David Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

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Hotly denied claims from the BBC that London "sexed up" an official dossier last September on Iraq's weapons arsenal to bolster the case for war in March, together with the suspected suicide of Kelly -- the likely source of the report -- have triggered a major political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair.

BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan reported that Blair's office was responsible for inserting in the Iraq dossier the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

That assertion "came from a reliable and established source, quoting a well placed senior officer" in the Iraqi army, the Foreign Office document was cited by the Guardian as saying.

The paper added that the government has never before admitted that such key information was based on hearsay.

Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, told the Guardian that the revelation damaged the government's credibility, adding: "It provides an even thinner justification to go to war."

Hutton's inquiry in London heard earlier this week that Kelly had told a BBC journalist the government had over-played the claim that it had evidence Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes.

"It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion. They were desperate for information which could be used," Kelly told Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC televison's Newsnight programme.