PM 'went beyond advice'

Tony Blair went "way beyond" expert intelligence advice with his claim that Iraq could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, according to a former senior analyst in the Ministry of Defence.

John Morrison, ex-deputy chief of the MoD's Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), said he could "almost hear the collective raspberry going around Whitehall" when Mr Blair told MPs the threat was serious and current.

He made the claim in a BBC Panorama documentary which also revealed that spy chiefs withdrew intelligence about Iraq's WMD.

And Dr Brian Jones, told Panorama "no one on my staff had any visibility of large quantities of intelligence of that sort".

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook has also weighed into the row.

He described as "the most extraordinary failure of communication" in their history the spy services' apparent failure to tell the Prime Minister before the war that the Iraqi dictator did not have any usable WMDs. The latest allegations come just days before publication of Lord Butler's inquiry report on the pre-war intelligence.

Dr Jones told Panorama no one knew what chemical or biological agents had been produced in Iraq since the first Gulf War.

Analysts assumed some stocks were left from the first Gulf War, but "if there had been any other production, we have not identified that it had taken place."