LONDON, July 4: Some of Britain's top spy masters and government figures face criticism by an inquiry into intelligence British Prime Minister Tony Blair cited to justify war against Iraq, media reported on Sunday.

The Sunday Times said a draft of the official inquiry's report singles out the head of the government's Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, and the head of MI6 intelligence service Richard Dearlove, for allowing misleading information into a "dossier" Blair used to justify war.

"(The report's) conclusion will be that the intelligence was wrong and that the system for checking it didn't work," the newspaper quoted an unnamed political source as saying.

The report will also criticise the government's top lawyer, Lord Goldsmith, who advised Blair the war was legal, but who has since admitted privately he had doubts about his own advice, the newspaper said.

The Independent on Sunday said Blair's office would come under fire in the report by Lord Butler to be published on July 14. It said his powerful former communications chief Alastair Campbell would be censured for trying to influence Scarlett over what to include in the dossier.

Blair took Britain to war - against the majority of public opinion - on the basis of a dossier that claimed Iraq was stockpiling weapons mass destruction and that President Saddam Hussein could have some weapons ready for use in 45 minutes.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq and the 45-minute claim has been discredited. The government's leader in parliament, Peter Hain, refused to comment on the newspaper reports.

Blair asked former civil servant Lord Butler to conduct a public inquiry into intelligence on Iraq after an earlier probe by judge Lord Hutton gave the government such a clean bill of health that it was dismissed by many as a whitewash.

The prime minister is anxious to draw a line under the Iraq war, which has slashed his popularity ratings, but the inquiry could reignite the row over his role in the US-led conflict.

Blair's former special envoy to Iraq, Jeremy Green stock, admitted on Sunday there were no weapons stockpiles in Iraq. "There is no doubt that the stockpiles that we feared might be there are not there," he told BBC television. "We didn't know they were there, but we thought that there was a considerable danger. The intelligence...was quite compelling at the time." -Reuters