Global Policy Forum

By David Rennie, Benedict Brogan and George Jones

George Bush and Tony Blair were under growing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic last night over allegations that they exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify war. An inquiry into the way the Bush administration used intelligence information about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons was announced in Washington yesterday.

The investigation by US senators increased the pressure on Mr Blair to hold an independent inquiry into allegations that Downing Street "doctored" last year's dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.

Mr Blair flies back to London today from the G8 summit in Evian, France, facing a growing crisis of confidence among Labour MPs, who fear Parliament and the public were misled. The Prime Minister had to interrupt talks with the leaders of other industrialised nations to deny damaging allegations from Clare Short, the former international development secretary, that she had been "duped" into supporting the war. His seven-day international tour, which began in the Gulf last week, has been dogged by the controversy.

Yesterday, perspiring visibly in a stuffy marquee in Evian, he rejected Miss Short's allegations that he had struck a secret deal last September with President Bush to invade Iraq. Mr Blair said he stood "100 per cent" behind intelligence claims made by the Government about Iraq's WMDs. Allegations that Downing Street had "doctored" material from the intelligence agencies to strengthen the case for military action were "completely and totally false".

His defiant performance failed to satisfy many Labour MPs, who are increasingly angered by the failure to find proof that Saddam was ready to deploy such weapons. One backbencher claimed the allegations that Parliament was misled were potentially "more serious than Watergate" - and Mr Blair can expect fierce questioning in the Commons tomorrow.

Mr Blair challenged his critics to produce proof of any wrongdoing by the Government, claiming the allegations were based on briefings from so-called anonymous sources.But his insistence that there was no need for an inquiry was undermined by the decision of the US Senate's armed services and intelligence committees to hold joint hearings in public into the intelligence warnings. Civilian Pentagon chiefs and the CIA director George Tenet are expected to be questioned live on television.

Announcing the inquiry, Sen John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate armed services committee and one of the most powerful men on Capitol Hill, said: "People are challenging the credibility of the use of this intelligence, and its use by the president, the secretaries of state and defence, the CIA director and others."

The hearings will examine how Iraq intelligence was gathered and assessed, and probe "how that data was passed on - in what form - to the policymakers, who then extrapolated what they wanted and put the emphasis on certain parts", he added.

Sen Warner, of Virginia, insisted he remained confident that the Bush administration did not deceive the American people on the road to war with Iraq, and said the US military should be given time to exhaust its search for banned weapons in Iraq.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, yesterday came out strongly in defence of his Feb 5 presentation to the UN Security Council, when he laid out the case that Saddam's regime was concealing a banned weapons programme from the world. Speaking in Rome, Mr Powell said "the evidence was overwhelming" that Iraq had continued to develop banned weapons.

Criticism of the Bush administration had largely been limited to opposition Democrats and a string of anonymous officials, who have expressed concern that ambiguous intelligence may have been "hyped" to emphasise the threat of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. However, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sen Warner came close to questioning the credibility of the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the CIA director George Tenet.

Sen Warner noted that he had asked both if the US military would be able to show television cameras evidence of WMDs after the war was won. "They answered yes. The implication was that the weapons will be there to see."

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