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Committee checks Blair's Iraq intelligence

A senior member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Cabinet said in an interview published Wednesday that "rogue elements" within the intelligence services were responsible for claims that the government exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi weapons.

The claim by John Reid, the Leader of the House of Commons, came after an influential parliamentary committee said it would investigate whether the government presented accurate information about Saddam Hussein's weapons before deciding to go to war.

With no weapons of mass destruction yet found in Iraq, the government is under increasing pressure to explain claims in an intelligence dossier that supported Blair's main argument for military action -- that the weapons presented a real threat.

The latest round of controversy about the weapons was fueled by a report on BBC Radio quoting an unidentified "senior British official" as saying that intelligence officers were unhappy about the inclusion in the dossier of evidence they regarded as unreliable -- such as a claim that weapons could be activated within 45 minutes.

Reid appeared to be responding to the BBC report when he gave his interview to The Times of London newspaper.

"There have been uncorroborated briefings by a potentially rogue element -- or indeed rogue elements -- in the intelligence services," he was quoted as saying.

"This is getting ridiculous. We have not found WMD (weapons of mass destruction) yet, but we have not found Saddam Hussein -- and everyone knows he existed," Reid added.

Blair has denied that his office doctored the intelligence dossier to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons, which he says existed and will eventually be found by coalition forces.

However, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said late Tuesday that it would soon conduct an exhaustive investigative inquiry into the decision to go to war.

It issued a statement saying it would consider whether the Foreign Office, "within the government as a whole, presented accurate and complete information to Parliament in the period leading up to military action in Iraq, particularly in relation to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."
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