Angry Blair says: 'We are too busy to find weapons of mass destruction'

Tony Blair rounded angrily on his tormentors yesterday, telling them that the British authorities in Iraq had more urgent priorities than finding weapons of mass destruction.

As question marks continued to hang over the evidence that Iraq had illegal weapons, which was used to justify the war, Mr Blair dismissed as "completely absurd" claims that politicians had added their spin to intelligence reports on the issue.

An unnamed diplomatic source reveals to a national newspaper today that the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, also privately exchanged serious doubts about the chemical weapons capability of Iraq before the war.

The source, who read a transcript of a 10-minute discussion between the two at the Waldorf Hotel in New York before a UN meeting on 5 February, said General Powell indicated that he was "apprehensive" about what he called at best circumstantial evidence. He said he hoped the facts would not "explode in their faces" when they came out.

Mr Straw was also said to be concerned that claims made by President George Bush and Tony Blair could not be proved.

In Warsaw yesterday Mr Blair was visibly annoyed that questions on the missing weapons had not gone away and that there were allegations that British politicians had added their spin to intelligence reports to justify a war. The Prime Minister said: "I have just caught up overnight with some of the allegations that have been made. Let me just say this: the evidence that we have of weapons of mass destruction was evidence drawn up and accepted by the joint intelligence community. That evidence of weapons of mass destruction is evidence the truth of which I have absolutely no doubt at all. The idea that we authorised or made the intelligence agencies invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd.

"What is happening here is that people who have opposed this action throughout are trying to find fresh reasons why it was not the right thing to do."

The Prime Minister claimed that the previous day's visit to Iraq, when he had seen "the freedom and the liberation that they have", demonstrated that removing the Baath regime was "emphatically the right thing to do". As proof that the regime had been harbouring weapons of mass destruction, he cited the 12-year history of United Nations resolutions instructing Iraq to disarm.

He added: "There is no doubt about the chemical programme, the biological programme and indeed the nuclear weapons programme. All that is well documented by the United Nations.

"Now our priority, having got rid of Saddam, is to rebuild the country, so the focus at the moment is on the humanitarian and political reconstruction of the country. The threat from weapons of mass destruction ­ obviously, with Saddam out ­ is not immediate any more.

"We have only just begun ... investigating the various sites. We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the manufacture of biological weapons.

"It is not the most urgent priority now for us, since Saddam is gone. So you are going to have to have a little bit of patience. I have absolutely no doubt at all that when we present the full evidence, after we have investigated all the sites, that evidence will be found, and I have absolutely no doubt that it exists. Saddam's history in relation to weapons of mass destruction is not some invention of the British intelligence services."

The main target of the Prime Minister's anger seems to be the BBC's Today programme, for alleging that politicians had added their spin to intelligence reports.

But he will also have been warned of the growing number of Labour MPs, including Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who resigned over the war, who have been asking what happened to the weapons that Mr Blair claimed were ready for use at 45 minutes' notice.

Mr Blair's future credibility will now depend, in part, on what Iraqi scientists tell the investigators who are questioning them. The Prime Minister emphasised yesterday that the interrogation could take "weeks and months".