US report may undermine dossier

Fresh questions were raised today over the accuracy of the British Government's September 2002 dossier on the threat posed by Iraqi weapons.

Reports in the US quoted a report dated the same month from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency saying: "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons."

At the time almost all Western nations, including Britain and the US, were agreed that Saddam had chemical weapons. Birkbeck College weapons expert Dan Plesch said: "This could blow the Government's case over its dossier right out of the water."

The report, on the USnews.com website, was the first time such a stark view had emerged from Washington in the run-up to war.

During the Hutton Inquiry it emerged that experts from the Defence Intelligence Service, the British equivalent of the USbased DIA, had expressed "concerns" about how intelligence used in Britain's September dossier was presented.

Middle East expert Dr Alan George, of St Anthony's College, Oxford, said: "I formed the very clear view in the run-up to war that Iraq did not have WMD on a scale to pose any threat to its neighbours, let alone this country."

Joe Wilson, the US ambassador who found no evidence to support the British claim about Saddam and uranium, said: "It's clear to me, at least in the case of the decision-making process in the US, that intelligence was... exaggerated. I think intelligence was chosen not because it was accurate but because it fitted the political decision that had already been taken."