LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair's government mishandled intelligence material on Iraqi weapons, a parliamentary committee reported Monday, but said it found no evidence Blair or his ministers deliberately misled lawmakers.

The committee also cleared Blair's communications chief of accusations he redrafted an intelligence dossier against the wishes of intelligence agencies to include unreliable information.





The allegations, arising from a British Broadcasting Corp. report, have soured relations between the broadcaster and the government, which on Monday repeated its demand for an apology.

But the critical parliamentary report heaped further pressure on the government to find tangible evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - and said that without such proof, the accuracy of British intelligence dossiers would remain in doubt.

"It is too soon to tell whether the government's assertions on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons will be borne out," said the report.

Blair, like President Bush, has been charged by political opponents with overstating the threat posed by Iraq before the war as a means of justifying it.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended the intelligence material and said the government had been right to go to war.

"Of course I understand that the public would like to see further evidence of the possession of chemical and biological weapons capability and plans to build nuclear capability," Straw said. "But the evidence available . . . at the time we took the decision to go to war was overwhelming."

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