Blair raised 'false expectation' on Iraqi WMD: Expert

"Personally I don't think they will find stockpiles in Iraq and (people) have been given a false expectation that they were there," the British expert, Brian Jones, told the Independent daily.

Saddam Hussein's refusal to give up his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was cited by Blair as the main reason to invade Iraq alongside the United States last March.

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In a key part of its attempts to persuade a sceptical Britain of the case for war, the government said in a September 2002 dossier that Saddam's regime could "deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so".

But Jones told the Independent that the intelligence assessment which included the controversial 45-minute claim had merely outlined "possible scenarios" rather than detailing any specific threat posed by Iraq.

"The fact was, it was so nebulous that there was nothing you could really hang your hat on," said Jones, who was in charge of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff until January 2003.