Intelligence chiefs warned Blair US ‘fixed’ case for Iraq war

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned by his intelligence chiefs that the case for war against Iraq was being fixed by the United States to suit their policy, it was claimed yesterday.

In a meeting chaired by Mr Blair in July 2003, Richard Dearlove, head of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, is on record as saying "the facts and the intelligence" were being "fixed round the policy" by the Bush Administration, according to a BBC documentary.

The Panorama programme claims British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw questioned whether former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed a sufficient threat to justify invasion.

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook also told the programme, Iraq: Tony and the Truth, that Mr Blair was not frank with the British people.

He said: "I think the real dishonesty of the government's position is that Tony Blair could not be frank with the British people about the real reason why he believed Britain had to be part of an invasion, which was to prove to the United States President that we were his most reliable, most sound ally.

"His problem was, he could not be honest about that with either the British people or Labour MPs, hence the stress on disarmament."

Brian Jones, a former member of defence intelligence staff, told the programme MI6 was tasked by the British government to extract as much information as possible from their limited sources in Iraq to build up an intelligence case.

He said: "I recollect that there was an appeal, if you like, for people to look and think very closely about the evidence that was available."

The former secretary of the Defence Notice Committee, Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson told Panorama: "The government perhaps allowed the public to be misled as to the degree of certainty about weapons of mass destruction."

In Iraq, the conflict moved into its third year yesterday, with insurgents targeting Iraqi security forces and government buildings, leaving at least six people dead including a top anti-corruption official.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Jordan, a court convicted Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, for plotting to attack the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, sentencing him in absentia to 15 years' imprisonment.

The court convicted al-Zarqawi and Al-Miqdad Mohammad al-Dabbas, 24, of conspiracy to attack the embassy.

Al-Zarqawi has also been accused of plotting a bomb attack on the embassy in August 2003, which left 18 people dead.

Neighbours Iraq and Jordan also withdrew their highest-level diplomats from each others' territory as tensions between the two increased over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a deadly suicide bomb attack in the city of Hillah.

A bomb exploded early yesterday near the northern city of Kirkuk, killing a US soldier and wounding three others, the US military said.

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a government compound in Mosul, killing Walid Kashmoula, the head of the Iraqi police anti-corruption department.

Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq group purportedly claimed responsibility for the attack.