The FE said in a statement it would file a lawsuit against the author of these leaks, which were published by the conservative daily Berlingske Tidende on Sunday.

The suit is based "on confidential assessment notes before the war in Iraq and on statements by an anonymous (FE) agent" to the paper.

According to these documents "no reliable information on operational weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) existed in Iraq. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had publicly claimed the contrary.

The FE request for an investigation comes after controversy over the real motives behind the US-led war, since no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the official end of the war in May 2003.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last month he had no doubt that pre-war intelligence about an active Iraqi quest for weapons of mass destruction was "genuine".

Grilled by US lawmakers, who voted to endorse the use of force in Iraq before the US-led invasion, CIA Director George Tenet said on Tuesday that the United States' intelligence community did not know what weapons capabilities Saddam's regime had.

US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California condemned pre-war statements by intelligence authorities. "People voted to authorise the use of force (to oust Saddam) based on what we read in these reports," she said.

Rasmussen had told the Danish parliament before the start of the US-led war on March 20, 2003, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

"This is not something we just believe. We know," he said at the time.

But an FE agent told Berlingske Tidende that most of the documents were "mainly a rewriting of the reports by US and British (secret) services with just a touch of critical (Danish) commonsense".

The spokesman for the opposition Socialist People's Party, Villy Soendal, criticised the FE move. "The intelligence agency does not seek to protect state security but apparently the credibility of the head of government," he said.

Rasmussen "manipulated or passed over information on Saddam Hussein's WMD threat" to justify Denmark's membership of the US-led coalition that ousted the Iraqi leader, Soendal said.

Rasmussen has said Denmark joined the US-led coalition that occupied Iraq because Saddam did not comply with United Nations resolutions after the 1991 Gulf War.

"What decided us wasn't the WMD issue. This was not the reason for our engagement," he has said. "But Saddam Hussein's lack of cooperation with the (UN) Security Council was to have consequences for him and led us to join the international coalition."

Denmark has deployed 500 men in Iraq's southern Basra region under British command.

It has also given 350 million kroner (47 million euros, 59 million dollars) to Iraq to finance "democracy and good governance".

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