Back in the House of Commons after a Group of Eight summit in the French Alps, and a lightning visit to British troops in Iraq last week, Blair insisted anew that his aides had in no way "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

"It is completely and totally untrue" that the dossier's most startling claim -- that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes -- was shoved in at the behest of Downing Street aides despite the reservations of intelligence officials, he said.

"There was no attempt at any time, by any official or minister or member of Number 10 (Downing Street) staff to override the intelligence judgements of the joint intelligence committee" on which the 50-page report was based, he said.

Blair added: "The truth is some people resent the fact it was right to go to conflict and we won the conflict... Iraq is now free and we should be proud of that."

It remained to be seen whether Blair's denials, during his weekly Commons question period, would succeed in putting a lid on the furore, before Chancellor Gordon Blair's long-awaited June 9 announcement on whether Britain should adopt the euro.

The row started up last week when BBC radio news, quoting an unnamed intelligence source, said the 45-minute deployment claim had come from a single source, and was inserted by Downing Street to "sex up" the dossier.

Leader of the House John Reid, a combative Scot who is close to Blair, had upped the ante earlier Wednesday when he told the Times newspaper that "rogue elements in the intelligence services" were behind the claim.

"I find it hard to grasp why this should be believed against the word of the prime minister... This is getting ridiculous," Reid was quoted as saying.

Blair announced Wednesday that the Commons' joint intelligence and security committee -- which meets behind closed doors, and whose reports are subject to censor by Downing Street -- would look into the issue.

The Commons' foreign relations committee, which convenes in public, has announced it too would hold hearings in June, with its findings report to be published in July.

Meanwhile, parliament on Wednesday voted to reject the establishment of a third, independent inquiry.

The Liberal-Democrat motion for the setting-up of such an inquiry was approved by 203 members of parliament, with 301 against. Eleven members of Blair's Labour Party voted in favour.

The opposition Conservative party, which had supported Blair's decision to involve Britain in the US-led war, broadly backed the motion.

The government dossier at the centre of the controversy, published in September 2002 as the threat of war loomed larger, largely reiterated what UN inspectors and other experts already knew about Saddam's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear arms.

But it also included this headline claim: "Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so."

BBC television claimed Wednesday that a member of the security services "intimately involved" in the compilation of the dossier, and others, felt "considerable discomfort" over the document.

The source believed that the emphasis placed on that element of the intelligence went too far, turning a possible capability into an imminent threat, according to the BBC.

Despite their total control over Iraq, US and British forces have yet to produce hard evidence that Saddam's regime still had weapons of mass destruction when it was invaded March 20.

WAR.WIRE