Downing Street plans new Iraq WMD report

Downing Street is planning to publish yet another Iraq weapons dossier in September, in time for the Labour Party conference.

The report will be based on the findings of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is made up of American and British teams that have been searching for an alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction since the war.

Lord Hutton's inquiry into the apparent suicide of David Kelly, the main source of a BBC report that the Government "sexed up" an Iraq weapons dossier, is expected to be finished before the party conference, scheduled to begin on 28 September.

The hearings at the High Court may lead to highly embarrassing disclosures for the Government over the way Dr Kelly's identity was exposed for the media, and a "positive" new dossier would help to limit some of the damage.

The ISG teams, under the direction of David Kay, a former United Nations arms inspector, have been conducting interviews with Iraqi scientists and officials of Saddam Hussein's regime. Their report will be sent to the Joint Intelligence Committee, chaired by John Scarlett, before being passed on to Downing Street.

No evidence has been unearthed so far that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But members of the ISG are said to be optimistic that they will find plans to develop WMD "programmes".

According to a report in The Economist, MI6 is also confident that the investigations will vindicate last September's Iraq dossier. The magazine says that there appears to be "hard evidence" of cover-up programmes designed to conceal WMD.

"We would hope to be able to demonstrate, in the fullness of time, that almost all the information in the [September] dossier was accurate," an insider" told the magazine.