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LONDON, July 20: British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced reforms to government and spy agencies on Tuesday to try to quell a furore over a damning report into flawed intelligence on Iraqi weapons.
But Mr Blair, whose public trust ratings have plunged in the occupation's aftermath, was again forced to defend himself against the charge he duped parliament and the country over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
"The intelligence really left little doubt about Saddam (Hussein) and weapons of mass destruction," Mr Blair said in a final debate on Iraq before parliament breaks for summer on Thursday.
"I don't accept it was a mistake to go to war. I think it was the right thing to do. I still believe it was the right thing to do," he added. Mr Blair had hoped to draw a line under the Iraq debacle with the report on intelligence, published last week by former civil servant Lord Butler.
Instead, Lord Butler's findings have revived the row over the US-led conflict and given Mr Blair's critics fresh ammunition to question his credibility - an issue they hope will feature prominently in next year's expected general election.
Mr Blair's Labour Party has suffered a string of embarrassing electoral losses in past months, partly due to an Iraq backlash. Opinion polls put him on track to lead Labour to a third general election victory but his trust ratings continue to suffer.
SPIES VERSUS POLITICIANS: Lord Butler cleared Mr Blair of distorting spies' assessments on Iraq but exposed faulty intelligence. He criticized Mr Blair's informal style of government and its closeness to secret agents.
In response, Mr Blair said in any future document, like a now notorious Sept 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons, intelligence would be presented separately from the political case and with all necessary caveats.
He also signalled a change to the informal meetings he held with senior ministers, intelligence chiefs and officials in the runup to the invasion - excluding his whole cabinet of senior ministers.
"In any future situation, such a group ... would operate formally as an ad hoc committee of cabinet," he said. The Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has appointed a senior officer to work through Butler's recommendations, Blair said.
Those steps failed to silence his critics. "Intelligence was sporadic, patchy, little and limited. Why did the prime minister say it was extensive, detailed and authoritative?" asked Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, which supported the invasion.
"The country was given a misleading impression of what the intelligence services said," Mr Howard added. But Michael Howard's own credibility came under attack after he said he would not have backed the invasion in a crucial vote if he had known then what he knows now about intelligence. He spent much of the debate explaining his position. -Reuters
