British Prime Minister, Tony Blair has dismissed as ?absurd? BBC claims that a top aide doctored a dossier on Iraq?s weapons to strengthen the case for war. ?I take it as about as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be,? Blair said as the stakes rose sharply in the government?s battle with the public broadcaster. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) governors met yesterday to examine whether an allegation by one of its journalists that Alastair Campbell, Blair?s communication chief, had ?sexed up? Iraqi intelligence was false. The claim has sparked open warfare between the public broadcaster and Blair?s office and the Prime Minister certainly did not mince his words in an interview published in The Observer. ?The idea that I or anyone else in my position, frankly, would start altering intelligence evidence ? or saying to the intelligence services I am going to insert this ? is absurd,? he said. ?You could not make a more serious charge against a Prime Minister that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence information that I falsified. The charge happens to be wrong,? he added. The BBC, citing an anonymous intelligence source, had accused Campbell of inserting into the September dossier a claim that Iraq could deploy weapons in 45 minutes.

?The charge is untrue?

?It is untrue, that statement is untrue,? Blair said. ?The charge is untrue and I hope that they will accept that. I think they should accept it.? The timing of the row could not be worse for Blair. A recent poll showed that 34 per cent of the public is less likely to trust Blair on other issues due to the weapons row. But Blair was still firmly convinced of his case, telling the newspaper: ?There is no doubt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. On any basis, there are unaccounted weapons of mass destruction.? To critics who keep asking where are the weapons in Iraq, he retorted: ?Remember for 30 years, we were trying to find weapons dumps in Northern Ireland and didn?t.? Parliament?s Foreign Affairs Committee is to publish its report on the weapons row today. Blair will himself appear before a separate parliamentary committee tomorrow when he is expected to be grilled about the September dossier and a second Iraq dossier, published in February. Parts of that dossier were lifted from a student thesis.

Paul Majendie