The House of Commons rejected a motion by Britain's opposition Conservative Party calling for a formal inquiry into the decision to go to war in Iraq.
By a vote of 288 to 253, the lower house of parliament on Monday sided with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has ruled out such an inquiry while British troops are deployed in Iraq.
The government, which has a majority of 61 in the House of Commons, had been expected to defeat the motion. The fact that it only won the vote by a majority of 35 indicated, however, that some members of Blair's Labour Party favored an inquiry.
Separately, the House voted 274 to 229 in favor of a government amendment warning that an inquiry would "divert attention" from the vital task of improving conditions in Iraq.
"We want the principle established that there must be an inquiry. It's about making sure we don't make the same mistakes again," Liam Fox, the Conservative's defense spokesman, said before the votes.
They came as Blair is preparing to leave Downing Street on June 27 and be replaced by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown as the leader of the Labour Party and prime minister.
On Monday, Brown visited Iraq on a fact-finding mission, previously unannounced, to study Britain's participation in the war and meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Before the war, the Conservative Party strongly supported Blair's decision to back the US-led invasion.
In a key House of Commons debate on March 18, 2003, shortly before the conflict began, 90 percent of Conservative members of parliament voted for the invasion, compared with 62 percent of the members of Blair's Labour Party. All the Liberal Democrats, the third-largest party in the Commons, voted against.
In the Commons, Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague urged the lawmakers to bow to the "gathering consensus'' and hold an inquiry into the Iraq war, which has been very unpopular with the British public.
He proposed setting up a Privy Council inquiry, which would begin taking evidence "in the near future," adding: "This government and future governments need to learn the lessons and the country needs to be assured that they will have done so."
Hague, who led the Conservative party from 1997 to 2001, spoke in favor of the invasion in the debate four years ago. At that time, he said it was part of Britain's "national interest to act in concert with the United States of America in matters of world peace and stability."
But Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told the House on Monday the government believes "there would come a time when these issues will be explored in the round," but while troops are actively engaged in Iraq "it would be wrong to launch such an inquiry."
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