Blair, in France for the Group of Eight summit, rounded on his critics as he was forced to field a barrage of questions on ever-widening allegations he misled his country over the immediate risk posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

"I stand absolutely, 100 percent behind the evidence, based on intelligence that we presented to people," Blair said when asked about pre-war British claims Iraq could fire chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

"The idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction is completely and totally false," he said.

The British prime minister, US President George W. Bush's closest ally in the war, appealed for people to "have a little patience" while the search for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq continued:

"When we accumulate that evidence properly, we will give it to people."

But his defiant comments failed to quell rising anger back in Britain among anti-war members of parliament in Blair's ruling Labour party.

More than 50 have signed a parliamentary motion calling for the publication of the full government evidence on Iraqi weapons.

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from his subsequent post as leader of Britain's lower house of parliament in opposition to the war, said the government had "got it wrong" and called for an inquiry.

Cook said the fact coalition troops, who have controlled Iraq since mid-April, had been unable to locate any illegal weapons stocks meant they probably did not exist in significant amounts before the war.

"I have difficulty with the idea that we (the British government) were right all along but, cunningly, the Iraqis destroyed everything before the war," he told BBC radio.

"We were told, I think this was the prime minister's own words, the whole purpose of this war was disarmament," Cook added in an interview with Britain's independent Channel 4 news network.

"Now that does look rather difficult to sustain when we have not yet found a single weapon of mass destruction to disarm."

An opinion poll published Monday found just 51 percent of Britons believed Saddam had biological, chemical or nuclear arms before the war, compared to 71 percent in February, while 44 percent considered Blair's claims were intended merely to win support for military action.

But Blair dismissed the idea that he had been behind a concerted campaign to mislead the British people.

"It is wrong, frankly, for people to make allegations on the basis of so-called anonymous sources when the facts are precisely the facts that we have stated."

He ridiculed the idea that Iraq might not have possessed useable weapons.

"The idea that Saddam Hussein has for 12 years been obstructing the UN weapons inspectors, has been engaged with this huge battle with the international community, when all the way along he had actually destroyed these weapons is completely absurd," he said.

Constant questioning about the issue has threatened to overshadow Blair's trip, which took him to Iraq, Kuwait, Poland and Russia before France.

He was given much-needed support on Monday by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who voiced equal certainty that Iraq was continuing to develop illegal weapons in the lead-up to the war.

"There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination," he told a news conference in Rome.

Meanwhile, the wife of 28-year-old British Royal Marine commando Ian Seymour, who died in the opening days of the Iraq conflict, said the possibility that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction made her feel that her husband may have died in vain.

"At the end of the day, the servicemen were going out there to do a job on the understanding that there were weapons of mass destruction," Lianne Seymour told BBC radio.

"To find out now that there wasn't, or there may not have been is just misleading."

She added: "I can't imagine how it's going to make me feel any better to know that my husband's sacrifice has been in any vain attempt to ... improve Mr Blair's political career."

WAR.WIRE