Evian, Jun 03: British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday angrily denied he had doctored a report on Iraq's alleged illegal weapons to justify the US-led war, amid calls for an inquiry into the growing row. Blair, in France for the Group of Eight summit, rounded on his critics as he was forced to field a barrage of questions on ever-widening allegations he misled his country over the immediate risk posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
"I stand absolutely, 100 per cent behind the evidence, based on intelligence that we presented to people," Blair said when asked about pre-war British claims Iraq could fire chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes. "The idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction is completely and totally false," he said.
The British Prime Minister, US President George W. Bush's closest ally in the war, appealed for people to "have a little patience" while the search for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq continued. "When we accumulate that evidence properly, we will give it to people," he said.
But former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from his subsequent post as leader of Britain's lower House of Parliament in opposition to the war, said the government had "got it wrong" and called for an inquiry.
Cook said the fact coalition troops, who have controlled Iraq since mid-April, had been unable to locate any illegal weapons stock meant they probably did not exist in significant amounts before the war. Bureau Report