"The intelligence certainly wasn't wrong. The evidence is there, it is published," Straw told BBC television: "They had those weapons systems and they had been building them up."

There was "nothing spectacular" about the assertion last September that Saddam Hussein's bio-chemical weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes, as this was true of many artillery systems, he said on the program "Breakfast with Frost", insisting: "Nothing in this document was hyped up."

The British media has in recent days insisted on explanations over how the prime minister's office allegedly exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run-up to the war.

Straw also denied as "completely untrue" a report in the left-wing Guardian newspaper that he and US Secretary of State Colin Powell had privately expressed doubts about the strength of the evidence they were presenting on

The Guardian said Saturday the two men voiced concerns about intelligence on Iraqi weapons during a private meeting in New York, shortly before a key UN Security Council meeting on February 5, when Powell presented what he claimed was clear evidence that Iraq was concealing banned weapons.

Its story was based on information from an unnamed diplomatic source, who the paper said had read a transcript of the conversation between Straw and Powell.

The Foreign Office dismissed the Guardian report Saturday as "simply untrue" and insisted "no such meeting took place" between Powell and Straw.

In Warsaw on Friday, Prime Minister Tony Blair, for his part, dismissed as "completely absurd" the idea that intelligence agencies fabricated evidence that Iraq had such weapons in order to justify war.

The US and its allies are to launch a fresh effort next week to find weapons of mass destruction, sending in a 1,300-member team to Iraq to take up a hunt that has turned up no banned weapons so far.

Straw told the BBC on Sunday: "We didn't take the military decision on the basis of some contingency as to what we might find later on. We took it on the basis of fully declared and disclosed evidence before the House of Commons, as well as before the international forum.

Straw said he believed searches would uncover "further evidence," while Saddam "almost certainly" destroyed evidence before the war.

"My own opinion about this is that he unquestionably had these weapons systems, but he had also asserted and lied to the international community that he hadn't got them," Straw said.

"I believe there was therefore a pretty substantial effort being put in in the run-up to military action to hide a lot of this stuff and to deceive the international community, even after the military action was over," the foreign secretary said.

Straw dismissed an attack by former development secretary Clare Short, who said Sunday that Blair had "duped" public opinion.

"I am sorry that Clare has come to that conclusion, but I happen to think that she is wrong."

WAR.WIRE