BRITAIN: The British Prime Minister yesterday insisted once again that he had been right to go to war on Iraq, denying he misled the public or parliament to do so.
But Mr Tony Blair said Saddam Hussein had been given time to conceal his alleged weapons of mass destruction and predicted that only "evidence of WMD programmes" would be found.
He said that the intelligence he published last September that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes had been right at the time.
He said the only mistake in the second "dodgy" February dossier had been not properly crediting an Internet thesis, despite being accused on Monday by the House of Commons foreign affairs committee of "misrepresenting" the status of the document to MPs.
Mr Blair, in shirtsleeves, faced a grilling for an hour and a quarter on Iraq as part of his evidence to the Commons liaison committee. He said terrorism and rogue states possessing WMD were the main security threats facing the 21st century.