LONDON, February 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With involvement in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq dismissed as one of the "greatest blunders" in Britain's foreign policy, 11 lawmakers from the ruling Labour Party questioned Wednesday, February 4, the credibility of the Blair-appointed chairman of an inquiry into Iraq pre-war intelligence.

The left-wing legislators lodged a motion with the House of Commons Wednesday charging that the record of Lord Robin Butler, a former head of Britain's civil service, "undermines his credibility as a fair and impartial chairman", reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

They cited Butler's public support for a pair of subsequently disgraced ministers in the Conservative government of then-prime minister John Major.

In 1994 Butler expressed the belief that then Minister of State for defense procurement Jonathan Aitken had not lied to him following newspaper reports concerning alleged corruption in dealings with Arab arms brokers -- a verdict undermined when Aitken was later jailed for perjury.

Butler was also accused of failure in his investigations into whether another minister, Neil Hamilton, wrongly accepted payments from a business tycoon.

Hamilton was later forced to resign from the government over the issue.

Butler led the British civil service for a decade under the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, before retiring in 1998.

In a remarkable U-turn Tuesday, February 3, Blair announced a cross-party inquiry into the quality of British intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons, which have not been found so far.

Blair bowed to mounting pressures and followed the example of the Congress-pressured U.S. president by ordering the inquiry.

The British prime minister had escaped unscathed last week from the worst crisis of his career when the British judge investigating the death of arms expert David Kelly concluded that the senior inspector took his own life.

'Greatest Blunder'

In a related development, former British foreign secretary Robin Cook branded the war in Iraq as the "greatest blunder" in the British foreign policy since the 1956 Anglo-French aggression on Egypt.

"The Iraq war is proving the greatest blunder in British foreign and security policy since Suez," Cook wrote in the Independent daily Wednesday.

"The war has neither disarmed a single weapon of mass destruction nor diminished the terrorist threat to British interests", he said.

"It has, though, undermined the authority of the U.N., divided us from our major partners in Europe and damaged our status in the Third World, especially Muslim countries," added Cook.

who resigned from his post as the minister in charge of relations with parliament last March in protest at involvement in the Iraq invasion.

He also questioned BLair's motives for joining the U.S.-led war that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"The truth is that Tony Blair did not take Britain into Iraq because of any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. He joined in the war because he wanted to prove to president Bush that Tony Blair was his best friend and Britain was his most reliable ally."

Cook, who has been sniping at Blair even since he resigned from his post as the minister in charge of relations with parliament last March in protest at involvement in the Iraq invasion, also dismissed as a "diversion" the Butler inquiry.

"The Butler inquiry is a diversion, set up to examine the pretext for war rather than its origins," he said.

"It will be a gross injustice if the intelligence services get the blame."

Last October, Cook revealed that Blair had privately admitted before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam had no WMDs.

Intelligence Demanded

Meanwhile, Britain's opposition Conservatives demanded Wednesday that the government publishes intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons capability, after  charges that the country's spy chiefs ignored expert views before the war.

"I think that this is very serious, very important indeed," Tory leader Michael Howard told the BBC.

The remark came after a former intelligence official said he and other experts were ignored when they said Iraq did not possess chemical or biological weapons before the U.S.-led invasion.

"The prime minister should publish this intelligence or explain why he can't. That is what Dr. Jones is asking for this morning. It seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable request."

The Independent quoted former secret services official Brian Jones as saying intelligence experts were overruled in the drafting of the controversial pre-war government dossier, the center of the Butler inquiry.

"In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS [Defense Intelligence Staff] were overruled in the preparation of the dossier back in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities," Jones averred.

"There was no indication that the Iraqi military had practiced the use of CW [chemical warfare] or BW [biological warfare] weapons for more than a decade."