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.