Probe launched into spies' WMD blunders

An inquiry was launched today over whether Britain's spies blundered by claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The investigation by senior MPs will last for five months - dashing Tony Blair's hopes of drawing a line under the row over his decision to go to war. It came as the American administration finally admitted that its own intelligence had been faulty.

Condoleezza Rice, President George Bush's national security adviser, conceded: "I think what we have is that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we have found on the ground."

In another blow to Mr Blair, David Kay, who resigned last week as the coalition's chief weapons hunter, said he now believed Saddam told the truth when the dictator said he destroyed his weapons years ago.

Dr Kay said he believed Saddam destroyed his chemical and biological weapons in secret - but played a fatal game of bluff by letting the world to think he had still had them.

"If the weapons programme existed on the scale we anticipated we would have found something," he told the Washington Post. "Instead we have found evidence that points to something else."

He said Saddam had practised "creative ambiguity" by keeping his reduced capability secret. "Saddam wanted to enjoy the benefits of having chemical and biological weapons without having to pay the costs," he said.

Dr Kay's view is now remarkably similar to those of former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix - whose claims that Saddam probably destroyed his WMD arsenal 10 years ago were derided by the coalition.

The new inquiry, by the Intelligenceand Security Committee (ISC), will summon MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove and other intelligence agencies to justify their claims - apparently wrong - that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons at 45-minutes standby, was developing new ones and was trying to build a nuclear bomb.

However, Downing Street is still firmly ruling out any independent public inquiry into the causes or justificationfor the Iraq war, as demanded by opposition parties.

The ISC, which sits in secret and does not publish all the evidence shown to it, has a Labour majority and reports directly to the Prime Minister, who can choose which parts of its reports to publish.

It has already published one report on the issue, which cleared Downing Street of deliberately "sexing up" the 2002 dossier on Iraq. A former senior military intelligence official accused the Government of using the intelligence services in a "public relations exercise".

Air Marshal Sir John Walker said Lord Hutton's conclusion that Downing Street did not misrepresent intelligence meant the agencies themselves were in the dock. "If we take Hutton's results as read, we are left with an intelligence failure," he said.