A preliminary report on the Iraq campaign by the British Ministry of Defence found "very little was known" about how the Iraqi military would react to the US-led operation that deposed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein earlier this year.

"Although we knew much about the broad structure and disposition of Iraqi land and air forces, very little was known about how they planned to oppose the coalition or whether they had the will to fight," the MoD said in its review.

The report was issued just hours after a parliamentary committee concluded from several weeks of hearings that the British government had not misled the public about the threat posed by Saddam but nevertheless criticised Prime Minister Tony Blair for the way he presented the case for war.

The MoD document also noted that the search for Iraqi WMD continues, but that this is expected to be a "long and complex task".

It went on to suggest that coalition military commanders were unsure whether Saddam Hussein would have been able to deploy WMD against British and US troops, or other targets.

"It was judged that the regime might use theatre ballistic missiles and possibly weapons of mass destruction if it could make the capabilities available for operational use and secure obedience of subordinate commanders," the report said.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said a fuller MoD report on the Iraq campaign would be published in due course, but he gave no indication of when it will be forthcoming.

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Paul Keetch said the admission in the MoD report that intelligence had been weak prior to the war further undermines British Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for war based on the intelligence assessment of Iraq's WMD.

In the parliamentary report, prepared by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, lawmakers investigated two government dossiers published in the run-up to war, one of which included the headline-grabbing claim that Saddam's WMD were deployable within 45 minutes.

WAR.WIRE