The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, has said his government was right to send its troops to the war in Iraq and was ready to be judged on this at an election later this year.
An independent report on Australia's spy agencies by former intelligence chief Philip Flood, released yesterday, found that pre-war intelligence was "thin, ambiguous and incomplete".
The report mirrored similar US and British inquiries but Howard is adamant he did not take the nation to war on a lie.
"The decision to join the military operation was taken by my government - it wasn't taken by the intelligence agency and I accept responsibility for that," Howard told Australian radio.
Mr John Howard
"In the end, I am the person who gets it in the neck from the electorate if they don't like the way I have run the country and I accept that," he said in Queensland state, where he has been visiting some of the marginal constituencies likely to determine the outcome of an election expected in October.
The Reuters Poll Trend, an analysis of various opinion polls, showed today that Howard's eight-year-old conservative government has only a wafer-thin lead of 0.1
percentage point over the centre-left opposition Labor party.
Australian National University political analyst Rick Kuhn said Australia's involvement in Iraq could become a key election issue besides more traditional concerns such as the economy.
But he noted Labour had so far failed to capitalise on it because it did not want to damage the relationship with key ally the United States.
"The Flood report could have been used by the Labour party to open up the question of the invasion of Iraq again," Kuhn said.
Labour became mired in a row with the United States earlier this month after senior US officials, including President George W. Bush, pressured Labor leader Mark Latham to drop a pledge to withdraw Australia's troops from Iraq if he won office.