Blair bows to pressure on Iraq WMD

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair last night bowed to pressure to tackle why no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have yet been found in Iraq.

Downing Street said the exact nature of how the issue was to be addressed would be announced "shortly", refusing to say whether it would copy the White House by setting up an independent commission to examine the affair.

Both Tories and Liberal Democrats insisted there should be a fully independent inquiry into the intelligence, which appears to have been so badly wrong it led Mr Blair to publicly claim for months that Saddam Hussein had WMD of which no trace has yet been discovered.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman insisted last night: "The Prime Minister believes that the war was justified and remains justified."

However, he conceded it was "a fact of life whether we like it or not" that questions were being asked about why no WMD have been uncovered by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG).

There were now "valid questions" about that, said the spokesman, adding: "It's valid to find a mechanism to try to address that question."

Mr Blair has been refusing for months to hold such an inquiry, urging people to wait for the outcome of the ISG's work.

But that position became untenable after US President George Bush announced he was asking an independent commission to explain the difference between what intelligence said the allies could expect to find in Iraq, and what has actually been discovered.