Blair, who has been fighting off claims that he exaggerated the menace posed by Baghdad to justify going to war, said that he had never argued that the former Iraqi leader could launch an immediate strike on Britain.

Questioned by deputies in parliament, Blair said that a controversial dossier published by his government last September on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had accurately represented information from intelligence services.

The prime minister said Saddam "was a threat to his region and to the wider world."

"I always made it clear that the issue was not whether he was about to launch an immediate strike on Britain. The issue was whether he posed a threat to his region and to the wider world," he added.

Two separate parliamentary inquiries are being held into whether Blair told parliament and the public the truth in the run up to military action.

Blair was Washington's staunchest ally in the conflict and contributed 45,000 military personnel, a naval task force and more than 100 aircraft to the campaign to oust Saddam's regime.

Increasing the pressure on Blair, former British foreign secretary Robin Cook told a parliamentary inquiry Tuesday that intelligence material was chosen selectively to fit a pre-determined policy.

Former international development secretary Clare Short, who along with Cook quit Blair's cabinet in protest over the conflict, said the prime minister had been guilty of "honorable deception" and had used "half truths and exaggerations" to get Britain into the war.

But Foreign Secretary Jack Straw denied Wednesday that there had been a "fixed decision" by the government to go to war while negotiations to resolve the crisis were still taking place in the United Nations.

At a briefing for journalists in London, Straw said that it was "inconceivable" that the government would have taken a decision to begin military action if Saddam had complied fully with UN resolutions on removing his weapons of mass destruction.

"It was not the case that a fixed decision for war was taken at an early stage," Straw said.

"We were prepared to take 'yes' for an answer from Saddam Hussein.

"Had Saddam complied as he could have done with the terms of resolution 1441 there could not have conceivably been a decision to go to war."

Straw added: "Nor is it the case that the September dossier on weapons of mass destruction was or is inaccurate. Nothing which has happened in Iraq since the conflict has proved that dossier wrong."

WAR.WIRE