Blair: Commons appearance

Tony Blair has faced down renewed demands to make a formal apology for the incorrect intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

The Conservatives have seized on foreign secretary Jack Straw's decision to withdraw claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Amid angry scenes in the Commons, Michael Howard repeatedly called on the prime minister to apologise for giving a "misleading" account of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

"The prime minister did not accurately report the intelligence he received to the country," he said. "Will he now say sorry for that?"

Blair, however, would not apologise for removing Saddam Hussein.

"I have made it abundantly clear and do so again that I take full responsibility and indeed apologise for any information given in good faith which has turned out to be wrong. That is entirely proper," he said.

"What I do not in any way accept is that there was any deception of anyone.

"That is what has been looked into by four separate independent inquiries and in each case that allegation has been found to be wrong."

"And I will not apologise for removing Saddam Hussein. I will not apologise for the conflict."

In a tense exchange, Blair went on to turn his fire on the Tory leader.

"I wish he would stop playing politics with this issue. It would be more helpful if he would back our troops in Iraq," he said.

Regime change

Charles Kennedy challenged Blair over evidence that his foreign policy adviser had given the White House assurances that the UK would back the war at least a year before the conflict began, irrespective of whether Saddam Hussein complied with UN resolutions.

"Sir David Manning minuted him on March 14, 2002 that he had told the American government 'the prime minister would not budge in his support for regime change'," the Liberal Democrat leader told the Commons.

Blair replied that the quote was being taken out of context but that Saddam had repeatedly flouted the UN.

"We always made it clear that if the only way of enforcing the UN resolutions was regime change, then there had to be regime change," he said.

Claiming that "the prime minister knows regime change is contrary to international law", Kennedy said the government's case for war was collapsing following the confirmation that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

"When will he accept that he led us into an illegal war?" he asked Blair.

The prime minister denied this was the case and called on Kennedy to accept the Iraq Survey Group's conclusion that Saddam was in breach of UN resolutions even without the banned weapons.

"I made my decision and I stick by," he said. "But let me make one thing abundantly clear, if he had his way Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be running Iraq."