Prime Minister Tony Blair faced demands yesterday for a new probe into the Iraq war as his rivals launched a concerted attack on him over the US-led invasion for the first time in Britain’s election campaign. The anti-war Liberal Democrat party placed advertisements in newspapers showing a smiling Blair beside US President George W. Bush under the headline “Never Again” and called for a public inquiry into Blair’s decision to go to war.

“Britain’s international reputation has been damaged by the way Tony Blair took us to war,” party leader Charles Kennedy told a news conference. “Tony Blair says history will be his judge. He is wrong. The British people will be his judge.” Blair’s trust ratings have plunged over Iraq but his government has already survived two major public inquiries into the war and analysts said it was unlikely to agree to another.

Iraq hit the top of the election agenda over the weekend as Blair’s Conservative opponents accused him of lying. A Sunday newspaper claimed the government’s top lawyer gave six reasons why Blair might breach international law if he went to war without a second United Nations resolution. The Attorney General later ruled the invasion was legal, prompting opponents to claim he had been put under pressure. Blair told a news conference no pressure had been applied but Foreign Secretary Jack Straw fell short of explicitly denying the report.

Defending decision to support Bush</B>

<B>Mike PEACOCK

<B>Opposition says vote out ‘liar’ Blair </B>

Tony Blair’s main rivals urged British voters to turn a May 5 election into a referendum on his honesty over the Iraq war, targeting what they see as a chink in the prime minister’s armour.

Polls put Blair’s centre-left Labour party on course for an unprecedented third term but point to the first real electoral contest since 1992. The impact of Iraq is a big unknown. “He has told lies to win elections. On the one thing on which he has taken a stand in the eight years he has been prime minister, which is taking us to war, he didn’t even tell the truth on that,” Howard told BBC Television. Asked if he was calling Blair a liar, he said: “Yes.” The attack overshadowed a speech by Blair to mark World Poverty Day, despite a solid endorsement for Labour from former US President Bill Clinton via video link to a party rally.

Poverty and debt relief are at the heart of Britain’s presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations this year. Iraq has barely featured in the poll race so far with the Conservatives hamstrung by their support for the conflict. But with polls showing they have failed to make inroads on key issues like health and education, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats appeared determined to change that dynamic. Howard said the poll was the public’s last chance to “make a judgment on Mr Blair’s character”.Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy stopped short of calling Blair a liar but urged the government to publish the legal advice given by the country’s top lawyer Lord Goldsmith: “The longer he remains unwilling to publish in full the attorney general’s advice, the more people are going to view this election as an issue of trust and as a referendum on the trust which they felt was so badly lacking over the decision to go to war,” Kennedy told BBC Radio. Most Britons opposed the war before it began and the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has eroded the public’s faith in Blair, whose sky-high popularity ratings helped Labour storm to victory in 1997 and in 2001.