LONDON, Aug 16: Britain’s headline-grabbing claim before the Iraq invasion that Baghdad could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was based on second-hand information, the Guardian said on Saturday.

The left-wing daily said the revelation that the 45-minute assertion was hearsay was contained in an internal foreign office document released to a judicial inquiry probing the suspected suicide of a government arms expert at the centre of a row of why Britain decided to side with the US in its invasion of Iraq.

Senior judge Lord Hutton is leading an investigation probing the circumstances leading up to the death of scientist David Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

Hotly denied claims from the BBC that London “sexed up” an official dossier last September on Iraq’s weapons arsenal to bolster the case for an invasion, together with the suspected suicide of Mr Kelly — the likely source of the report — have triggered a major political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair.

BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan reported that Blair’s office was responsible for inserting in the Iraq dossier the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

That assertion “came from a reliable and established source, quoting a well placed senior officer” in the Iraqi army, the foreign office document was cited by the Guardian as saying.

Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, told the Guardian that the revelation damaged the government’s credibility, adding: “It provides an even thinner justification to go to war.”

Lord Hutton’s inquiry in London heard earlier this week that Mr Kelly had told a BBC journalist the government had overplayed the claim that it had evidence Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes.—AFP