Britain's Tony Blair dismissed a fresh assault on the case he made for attacking Iraq but the prime minister was hounded by members of the public on Wednesday as he failed to quell the furore over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction.
Former British weapons expert Brian Jones alleged the government had overruled intelligence analysts to present a "misleading" pre-war dossier on Iraq's banned weapons - the primary Anglo-American motive for war.
Blair told parliament that Jones' concerns were heard by his superiors and were not taken up and he defended the conclusions of senior British judge Lord Hutton who last week cleared the government of exaggerating evidence on the threat from Iraq.
Jones' remarks poured fuel on the row over the justification given for war, frustrating Blair's attempts to draw a line under one of the most gruelling periods of his premier-ship.
Bowing to pressure, Blair on Tuesday set up an independent inquiry into possible intelligence flaws on Iraq but the move failed to silence his critics.
As he led a debate in parliament on Hutton's findings, five anti-war protesters heckled the prime minister.
"No more whitewashes!" shouted one from the public gallery, before being evicted. The debate was briefly suspended.
Blair emerged spotless from Hutton's inquiry into last July's suicide of scientist David Kelly, who killed himself after being ousted as the source of a BBC report that claimed the government had "sexed up" the evidence of Iraq's illicit weaponry.
Large parts of the media and the public have branded Hutton's report - which lambasted the BBC - one-sided.
ANOTHER WHITEWASH? Jones, who recently retired from the Ministry of Defence, stunned the Hutton inquiry when he said he had complained to his superiors over the strength of language in the Iraq dossier and he took that charge further on Wednesday.
"In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS (Defence 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," he wrote in The Independent newspaper.
Blair's opponents say the new inquiry - set up after US President George W. Bush launched a similar probe in Washington - is too limited and will not examine the way politicians presented intelligence on Iraq to the public.
The opposition Liberal Democrats are boycotting the inquiry.
On Wednesday, Blair repeated his refusal to allow the new probe to examine the political decisions on going to war.
But he appeared to concede that the investigation, chaired by Lord Butler, would be allowed to look at the way government used the intelligence it received, not just its accuracy.
"It is certainly not going to address the issue of whether it was right to go to war or not," Blair said. "But of course it is important that it looks at the use of the intelligence, the gathering of it, the evaluation - all of that, it can be done."
Blair was forced to set up a new probe after former US chief weapons hunter David Kay said he did not believe Iraq had any stockpiles of banned weapons.
Blair said there was still a chance arms inspectors in Iraq would unearth some evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But he justified the conflict, even if nothing more was turned up.
"Even if they find only what they have found so far, we would have been irresponsible in the highest degree not to have acted against Saddam..," he said.