British Prime Minister Tony Blair is tomorrow expected to announce an inquiry into the intelligence on which he based his decision to go to war with Iraq.
Some form of announcement had been expected tonight.
But Downing Street said the Commons Speaker had decided it would be "more appropriate" for Mr Blair to spell out how the issue of the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will be addressed, during his appearance tomorrow morning before the Commons liaison committee.
A Downing Street spokesman declined to say what Mr Blair would be announcing, though speculation tonight suggested the Prime Minister might establish a committee of both Houses of Parliament, with an independent chairman.
Both Tories and the Liberal Democrats insisted there should be a fully independent inquiry into the intelligence which appears to have been so badly wrong it led Mr Blair publicly to claim for months that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
But the Prime Minister's spokesman, speaking after the White House revealed President Bush would be ordering a commission of inquiry into the affair, said Number 10 had been in close touch with the US administration.
The spokesman said: "What's different between last week and this is that the Hutton report, like the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report and like the Intelligence and Security Committee report, has cleared the government of allegations of having politically interfered with, falsified or hyped the intelligence on WMD.
"That allows us to address - hopefully in a more rational way, a more rational context - the perfectly valid question that people have asked about WMD.
PA