LONDON, Sept 30: Britain's main opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard has accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of lying to the British people about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction in the run up to the Iraq conflict.

"I don't think that's the only thing they were lied to about ... but Iraq is the great catalyst for the loss of trust in the government," Mr Howard said in an interview for the New Statesman magazine.

Asked to clarify whether he thought that Mr Blair himself had lied to the public, Mr Howard said: "Yes." Asked when Mr Blair had lied, the opposition leader said: "Notably when he had intelligence, as is set out in full in the Butler report, which was hedged with qualifications, caveats, warnings, which he translated into certainty."

"That was the unambiguous evidence that he put to the country," he said. Since the war Mr Howard has said his party would not have backed the government's decision to invade Iraq had it known that the intelligence on Iraq's weapons was so flawed. -APP