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Blair attacks critics as more allegations emerge

British Prime Minister Tony Blair fired back at critics who claim he exaggerated the threat posed by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein but faced more allegations yesterday that his office distorted a dossier to make the Baghdad regime appear more menacing.

Ibrahim al-Marashi, a US-based academic whose research was used without acknowledgment in a British intelligence document in February, said Blair's office "plagiarized and manipulated" academic material by inflating figures and exaggerating Iraq's weapons capability.

Writing in the right-wing Daily Telegraph, al-Marashi said Downing Street "borrowed" and significantly altered a phrase in which he said Iraqi intelligence was "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes."

The government dossier changed the wording to "supporting terrorist groups in hostile regimes."

"By changing these few words, the February 2003 dossier attempts to convince the reader that the Iraqis had the infrastructure to support groups such as al-Qaeda," the network led by Osama bin Laden, al-Marashi said.

On Wednesday, Blair accused his critics of trying to refight the bitter arguments over his decision to make Britain the only nation to make a major military contribution to the US' invasion of Iraq. At times, his exasperation spilled over.

"There have been many claims made about the Iraq conflict, that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, that it was going to be my Vietnam, that the Middle East was going to be in flames and this latest one, that weapons of mass destruction were a complete invention by the British government," Blair said in the House of Commons.

"The truth is, some people resent the fact it was right to go to conflict. We won the conflict thanks to the magnificent contribution of the British troops, and Iraq is now free and we should be proud of that."

Disagreements over the intelligence reports has prompted British intelligence chiefs to seek the government's assurance that it will never again pass off as official intelligence information which does not come from them.
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