LONDON, Nov 24: Twenty-three members of parliament filed a motion on Wednesday to impeach British Prime Minister Tony Blair on charges of "gross misconduct" over the US-led invasion of Iraq.

However, the first such bid to impeach a prime minister in 198 years has no chance of passing as it lacks the official backing of the two main opposition parties, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

Analysts said the motion, filed in the House of Commons by 10 Conservatives, two Liberal Democrats as well as nine Welsh or Scottish nationalists, was aimed more at embarrassing or humiliating the prime minister if it goes to a vote.

The MPs say Blair misled parliament and the country over the case for war, destroying "the fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy" that the government must tell the truth to MPs.

The group wants a select committee to be set up to examine the prime minister's conduct in relation to the war. They want it to consider if there are sufficient grounds to impeach him on charges of "gross misconduct."

It says it should consider the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction and United Nation Secretary General Kofi Annan's declaration that the war was illegal.

The committee should also consider if there are sufficient grounds to impeach Blair on charges of "gross misconduct in his advocacy of the case for war and in his conduct of policy in connection with that war".

Adam Price, an MP from the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru party who started the campaign, demanded a House of Commons debate on the prime minister's conduct. "We must make a stand or watch the democracy we have fought so often for against foreign enemies be subverted from within," he said.

"The rules of constitutional conduct have been brushed aside. The cabinet table has been replaced with the sofa, cabinet minutes with e-mail and the facts replaced with belief," Price said. -AFP