Global Policy Forum

Matthew Tempest and Agencies

Tony Blair today made an angry but opaque denial of accusations that Downing Street asked for a dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to be "sexed up". Speaking in Poland ahead of a speech on the extension of the EU, Mr Blair said it was "completely absurd" to suggest that MI6 was made to "invent some piece of evidence". However, the actual allegation, made to the BBC yesterday by a senior security official, was that the government had asked for the document to be "sexed up".

Explaining why it had taken 24 hours for the prime minister to answer the allegations, Mr Blair said he had "only caught up overnight" with the claims, although he spent yesterday in Iraq, with a mobile office. Mr Blair, visibly annoyed that the claims on WMD were still dogging him, went on: "What's happening here is that people who have opposed this action throughout are now trying to find a fresh reason for saying it wasn't the right thing to do. He told reporters: "I have just caught up overnight with some of the allegations that have been made, so let me just say this. "The evidence that we had of weapons of mass destruction was evidence drawn up and accepted by the Joint Intelligence Committee. "That evidence of weapons of mass destruction is evidence the truth of which I have absolutely no doubt about at all. "What's more, the idea that we authorised or made our intelligence agencies invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd." He continued: "When you go to Iraq and talk to people there and see the freedom they have, you realise why it was emphatically the right thing to do.

"When you say there is no evidence that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, there are 12 years of United Nations resolutions about the weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. There's no doubt about the chemical programme, the biological programme, indeed the nuclear weapons programme. "All that is well documented by the UN. "Our priority, having got rid of Saddam, is to rebuild the country, so the focus at the moment is on the humanitarian and the political reconstruction of the country. "The threat of weapons of mass destruction, obviously with Saddam out, is not immediate any more. We have only just begun the process now of investigating the various sites. "We have found two trailers, both of which we believe were used to produce biological and chemical weapons.

"You have just got to have a little bit of patience. I have absolutely no doubt at all when we produce the further evidence, that evidence will be found and I have absolutely no doubt it exists because Saddam's history of weapons of mass destruction is not some invention of the British security services. "It has been well documented over 12 years of lies and deception from Saddam."

Mr Blair, aware of the irritation he had shown, added: "I'm sorry, I have probably spoken enough." Later, veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell tabled a Commons question to the prime minister asking to which Iraqis he was referring when he claimed in Warsaw that he had spoken to local people during his visit to Iraq on the subject of welcoming the American-British military action. Mr Dalyell, MP for Linlithgow and father of the Commons, commented: "From the public prints and the BBC, I understand that the only Iraqis to whom he spoke were schoolchildren."

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