Opposition parties asked the government to order a probe into intelligence made available to it before the war to back up claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready for use -- the key reason given for the March invasion.

"It would be a very serious matter if the government is shown to have tricked both parliament and public opinion," said Jeppe Kofoed, spokesman for the social-democrat opposition.

He urged Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was one of Washington's staunchest allies in Iraq, to clarify whether "there had been an imminent threat from these weapons of mass destruction" in the run-up to war.

"The prime minister blindly trusted the information provided by the United States and Britain on the subject of these weapons," former foreign minister Niels Helveg Petersen told AFP.

"It is highly important to shed full light on the legal basis of Denmark's engagement in the war," he said.

During a stormy parliament session on Wednesday, Rasmussen defended the decision to involve Denmark in the war, saying: "These weapons were somewhere in Iraq... everything indicates that Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons"

Rasmussen tempered his remarks, however, with the claim that Iraq's alleged weapons arsenal was only one of several reasons for going to war, citing also Saddam's alleged terrorist links and the brutality of his regime.

Socialist party spokesman Villy Soevndahl insisted, however, that the government had given only one reason -- Iraq's alleged banned weapons -- for signing up to the US-led war coalition in March.

"Two months and nine days after the end of the war, there is still no sign of these alleged weapons. If they were never to be found, Rasmussen would face a serious credibility problem," Soevndahl told AFP.

Soevndahl said there was little chance, however, of the government agreeing to an independent probe into intelligence supplied to it before the war.

Conservative Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Wednesday: "The key was not the fact that Saddam had (banned weapons) but that the world believed him to have them."

The British and US governments have faced a storm of criticism in recent weeks over the intelligence used to justify the war.

Saddam's 24-year iron-fisted regime crumbled on April 9, after three weeks of war, as US forces rolled into Baghdad.

But even though US-led forces have been in control of most of the country since then, they have yet to locate evidence backing the central case for war: that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons, pursued nuclear arms, and might one day have armed terrorists with them.

WAR.WIRE