LONDON, Feb 18: The British government on Monday released an early draft of its controversial dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, after losing a bid to keep it secret.

The 30-page draft, drawn up by the Foreign Office’s then communications director John Williams on July 24, 2002, and classified “confidential”, had been the subject of a request under Britain’s freedom of information laws.

Campaigners have been pushing for it to be made public, claiming it could show that the final dossier — in which it was claimed Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes — was the work of government “spin doctors”.

The government has always maintained Williams’ paper was not relevant as the final dossier was the work of its intelligence agencies. The 45-minute claim — later discredited — is not contained in the press chief’s document.

Instead, it concentrates on allegations that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime had acquired uranium, retained the ability to manufacture chemical and biological weapons and was developing long-range missiles.

At one point a hand-written note in the margins calls for more detail about the chemical weapons used by the Iraqis.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a written statement to parliament that the draft was withheld because of concerns it could deter officials from giving frank advice if they feared it could be made public.

Williams’ paper “was not commissioned as part of the formal drafting process and was not used as the basis for the dossier which the government subsequently published”, he added.

The published dossier — which came out in September 2002 — was at the heart of a row between the government and the BBC, which accused it of overstating or “sexing up” the claims about WMD to make the case for war.

Weapons inspector David Kelly was later found dead after being identified as the source of the BBC report. A subsequent inquiry said the government had not inserted the 45-minute claim against the wishes of the intelligence community.

Edward Davey, the foreign affairs spokesman for the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said there were still broad similarities between Williams’ paper and the published version.

“The government cannot continue to deny the major role that spin doctors played in creating this dossier. The core analysis of the threat allegedly posed by Iraq is the same in both documents,” he said.

Davey’s counterpart at the main opposition Conservative Party, William Hague, said similarities between the Williams document and the published dossier was fresh proof the government had “spun” its case for war.

“This is yet further evidence that spin doctors, not intelligence analysts, were leading from the first in deciding what the British people were told about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

He also renewed calls for a public inquiry into the war.—AFP