Britain: Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair is expected to tell MPs this morning the terms of his proposed inquiry into the intelligence material used to justify Britain's support for the American-led war in Iraq.
His expected U-turn became inevitable following President George W Bush's decision to appoint a bipartisan commission of inquiry into the continued allied failure to uncover Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Mr Blair had been expected to confirm his plans last night, in an answer to a written parliamentary question.
However it is understood the Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr Michael Martin, felt it would be "more appropriate" for him to make any announcement when he appears before the Liason Committee of Select Committee chairmen this morning.
This seeming rebuff for 10 Downing Street came at the end of a day which heard the Conservative leader Mr Michael Howard taunt the prime minister not to continue to be "the odd man out" on an issue now increasingly exercising supporters as well as opponents of the war.
Mr Howard tabled a Commons motion seeking all-party support for "an independent inquiry" into the "serious questions" remaining "about the quality and use made of intelligence relating to WMD in the run-up to the Iraq war and its aftermath." And he suggested he and the Liberal Democrat leader Mr Charles Kennedy should be consulted about its terms of reference.
Having previously insisted people should await the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, Mr Blair's position was deemed "untenable" yesterday following the announcement that President Bush had yielded to domestic American pressure and ordered his own inquiry into the perceived failings of pre-war intelligence.
Downing Street maintained the situation had changed in the light of last week's Hutton Inquiry Report clearing Mr Blair "of having politically interfered with, falsified or hyped the intelligence on WMD." Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "That allows us to address - hopefully in a more rational way, a more rational context - the perfectly valid questions that people have about WMD."
However the suggestion that they had been waiting to clear the Hutton hurdle did not persuade some critical MPs who saw the proximity of developments in Washington and London as evidence that British domestic policy was being dictated by events in the American capital.
And the former foreign secretary Mr Robin Cook said an inquiry should not be conducted "to scapegoat the intelligence agencies", insisting "the decision to go to war was a political one." Amid speculation that Mr Blair was about to appoint an all-party parliamentary committee to conduct his inquiry, Mr Cook also argued that its remit should be "broad" and its findings "quick." While suspicious that President Bush might be happy to have the American inquiry conclude well after this year's presidential election, Mr Cook agreed Downing Street would be aware that a similar timescale could see a British inquiry reporting in Mr Blair's election year.
The British people were not voting in the presidential election, he said, and were entitled to know what had gone wrong within "a much tighter timetable."
The Foreign Affairs Select Committee said yesterday that the failure to find Iraq's alleged WMD had "damaged the credibility" of the US/UK "war" on international terrorism and that British and US forces in Iraq were now facing "a dangerous alliance of foreign fighters with terrorist allegiances and elements of the former regime."