Saturday night former Cabinet minister Clare Short said that she knew of military doubts over the legality the war.
"I was told at the highest level in the department that the military were saying they wouldn't go, whatever the PM said without the attorney-general's advice. The question is was the AG leant on?" Short said.
"This was a very personal operation by Tony Blair. The attorney-general is a friend of Tony's, put in the Lords by Tony and made attorney-general by Tony," she said.
It has also been established that GCHQ, the government's top-secret surveillance center, has a specialist unit dedicated to spying on the UN. The revelation will strengthen claims that the bugging of Britain's diplomatic allies at the UN was routine and is likely to trigger a fresh international furore over the legality of Britain's spying operations abroad.
The former Chilean ambassador to the UN, Juan Gabriel Valdes, said last night: "All I can say is what I said at the time when asked if I had information about spying on Chile and I said yes, it has been proved.
"It [eavesdropping] was one more element of tension during some very tense weeks. Nobody was very surprised. But it is one thing not to be surprised and another to do clearly illegal things," he said.
Gun leaked a top-secret e-mail last March revealing a joint British-American operation to spy on the UN in the run-up to war.
She claimed she acted to prevent the loss of human life in an illegal war.
Close allies
Downing Street refused on Saturday to comment on the allegations. Blair's spokesman also refused to say whether the White House had been consulted over the dropping of the Gun case, despite growing conviction at Westminster that it would have been inconceivable for the Foreign Office not to have taken its closest ally's views into consideration.
Despite Blair's refusal to give a statement to the Commons, the government is unlikely to escape further questioning. Both Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon are already due to answer questions next week while Home Secretary David Blunkett will be grilled by a joint Commons inquiry into homeland security.
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