Questioning the veracity of BBC radio journalist Andrew Gilligan's claim made last month, opposition Conservative MP Sir John Stanley said the committee had received a note from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asserting that the dossier reflected "in almost identical terms" the original threat assessment by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

Stanley accused Gilligan of "making very serious allegations against the integrity of the JIC" and demanded to know whether he was accusing Straw of lying.

"What you are saying is the JIC and its chairman, under pressure, sexes up their original assessment at the last moment and introduces material which, according to your source, is unreliable," Stanley said.

"You are saying that the whole of the JIC connives in the embellishment of a JIC assessment for political purposes."

To which Gilligan replied: "I am not making any allegations. My source made the allegations."

He added: "It is not my business to say whether the foreign secretary is lying or not."

Gilligan, defence correspondent of the Today programme, which is essential listening for Britain's political class, said his source was closely involved in compiling the 50-page dossier, published by the government last September.

He denied his source was a "rogue element", saying it was someone who was "sufficiently senior and credible" worth reporting.

Quoting an unnamed "senior official", Gilligan last month claimed intelligence agencies had opposed the inclusion in the dossier of the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons in just 45 minutes.

In response, parliament's foreign affairs committee launched an inquiry that opened Tuesday with testimonies from two former cabinet ministers who resigned over the Iraq war.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has declined to sit before the inquiry, though Straw will testify twice -- once in public next Tuesday, and later behind closed doors.

Testifying Tuesday, former cabinet member Robin Cook said Britain went to war against Iraq in March with questionable information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Cook, who was Blair's foreign minister during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, quit the cabinet as the leader of the House of Commons in protest over the war being launched without UN approval.

Meanwhile Clare Short, who also quit Blair's cabinet in protest over the war, testified that, in her view, the prime minister was guilty of "honorable deception" in the run-up to the conflict.

Blair was US President George W. Bush's staunchest ally in the run-up to the war and had contributed 45,000 troops to the effort to oust Saddam's regime.

The probe is running in parallel to an investigation over the same issue by parliament's intelligence and security committee.

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