Blair in the line of fire

Lord Robin Butler, the former civil service head who has led the five-month investigation, will deliver his verdict on Wednesday.

A similar US probe criticised US intelligence agencies for mistakes over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) on Friday, but absolved President George W. Bush of exerting pressure to exaggerate the threat.

Such a conclusion from Butler would be about the best outcome Blair could expect, many pundits think, although it would still prove extremely tricky for the under-fire premier.

Britain's Sunday newspapers reported that Blair will escape severe censure in the official inquiry.

The premier will face some criticism for an over-presidential style of government, but will not be accused of urging spy chiefs to hype up the threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stocks, the papers said.

When Butler was appointed to head the inquiry, critics complained that his 37 years in the civil service made him too much of a government insider to be truly independent.

Others, however, argue that Blair could be in for a surprise from a man who served five separate prime ministers and is thus more loyal to the institutions of government than the individuals who fill them.

Several newspaper reports have predicted that Butler, 66, will also mainly target the intelligence community, while others have tipped Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to absorb the bulk of the political flak.

But senior intelligence figures have already begun to clamour for the prime minister to take his share of the responsibility.

"The buck stops there, and I don't think that the political layer in any country can escape the consequences of a systemic failure," Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the ex-head of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, said on Saturday.

Far more so than Bush, Blair took Britain into last March's war to unseat Saddam Hussein almost exclusively on the basis that the Iraqi leader's stocks of chemical and biological weapons posed a "severe threat" to the world.

Blair's decision to back the US-led war was hugely controversial at home, and the failure of coalition forces to uncover any illegal weapons in the 15 months since Baghdad fell has seen his popularity plummet.