Robin Cook and Clare Short were to testify before the House of Commons foreign affairs committee amid allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair's office had exaggerated its claims about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

Cook, a former foreign secretary, walked out of his job as leader of the House of Commons before the conflict began, while Short quit as international development secretary on May 12, after Saddam Hussein's downfall.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is to appear next Tuesday, and again in private on June 27.

Blair vigorously backed US President George W. Bush in the run-up to the US-led war, arguing to a skeptical British public that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were a menace to global security.

Since then, however, no hard proof of such weapons has been found, and Blair has been fighting off claims that a Downing Street dossier last September was "sexed up" to beef up the case for war.

Most controversial has been the dossier's claim that chemical and biological weapons could be deployed in as little as 45 minutes.

The foreign affairs committee's inquiry, chaired by Labour MP Donald Anderson and titled The Decision to go to War in Iraq, is hearing most of its evidence in public before publishing its reports.

Last Wednesday, Blair said he would not appear before the committee. Nor will Alastair Campbell, one of his closest aides, who as Downing Street's director of communications was involved in preparing the dossier.

Blair has ordered another investigation by parliament's intelligence and security committee. Though it meets behind closed doors, the prime minister has said its findings will be released.

Cook was Blair's foreign minister when Britain took part in the NATO-led war on Yugoslavia, and as Commons leader he was responsible for managing the government's legislative program.

He resigned on March 18 in protest over Britain going to war without UN backing. Later he said the dossier's 45-minute deployment claim was wrong, and the government had committed "a monumental blunder."

When she quit on May 12, Short said the run-up to the war had been "mishandled," and that she had been misled by Blair about the need for a UN mandate to set up a post-Saddam government.

WAR.WIRE