CANBERRA, July 22: Australia used "thin, ambiguous and incomplete" intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify waging war on Iraq, a government-commissioned report found on Thursday.

The report cleared Australian politicians of pressuring intelligence agencies to strengthen the case for war against Saddam Hussein's regime but found Canberra's spies failed to properly challenge assumptions and sources.

"There has been a failure of intelligence on Iraq WMD," said the report by former intelligence head Philip Flood.

"Intelligence was thin, ambiguous and incomplete. Australia shared in the allied intelligence failure on the key question of WMD stockpiles," he said, echoing reports from Britain and the United States critical of shortcomings in pre-war intelligence on Iraq's unfound WMD.

Flood found the Australian intelligence service's assessments were relatively cautious compared with its British and US counterparts.

"Using similar but not all the material available to the UK and the US, Australian assessments on Iraq's capabilities were on the whole more cautious and seem closer to the facts as we know them so far," it said.

Releasing the long-awaited report, Prime Minister John Howard said his government's decision to join the invasion of Iraq was correct and he had no regrets.-AFP