TRANSCRIPT OF EXTRACTS FROM

BBC RADIO 4 SIX O'CLOCK NEWS

THURSDAY 29`n MAY 2003

Presenter: The existence or otherwise of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

continues to cause controversy at home . Downing Street has denied a
claim on the Today programme that a dossier on the subject, issued
before the war, was rewritten at the Government's insistence to make the
threat appear more immediate . The report has been seized upon by
opposition parties and Labour backbenchers who opposed military
action . Here's our political correspondent Recta Chakrabarti .

Reeta Chakrabarti : Downing Street denied that it had acted inappropriately with regard to
the dossier which was released last September . A senior British official
had told the Today programme that the dossier had been transformed
through Downing Street's intervention in the week before it was
published to make the case for military intervention more compelling .
But m a statement Downing Street said that not one word of the dossier
was not entirely the work of the intelligence agencies and the Armed
Forces Minister Adam Ingram vigorously denied that any pressure had
been exerted by .Number Ten and said the case for war had been based on
many different factors . '

Adam Ingram: The war was fought for er, on the basis of all ofthose allegations, much
of which was substantiated, not just in a security document produced by
our security services, not concocted by by Number 10 ; but their best
knowledge, and their best assessment of what they could play out into the
public domain. The whole world know what Saddam Hussem was up to
in terms of the weapons of mass destruction, that's why we prosecuted
that war, that's why we were right.

RC: But the Govemsnent's denial hasn't quashed real concerns about the
basis of Britain's involvement. The Labour backbencher Brian
Donahue had doubts about the war but was persuaded not to vote against
the Government in the crucial Commons' debate . He called for a fresh
debate on whether or not MPs had been misled .

Brian Donahue: Nt,'e wouldn't have been to war if hadn't been for the fact that we were
convinced that there gonna be problems if we weren't to go to war by
virtue of the fact that he was supposed to have, Saddam that is, was
supposed to have had weapons of mass destruction that could be utilised
in a very short timescale . That hasn't now demonstrated itself as being
overwhelming as far as evidence is concerned

RC : Tony Blatr has said he's convinced weapons of mass destruction will be
found but voices within the US Government have, in the last two days,
been trying to minimise the importance of finding any . That, coupled
with today's allegations of improper spinning from Downing Street give
this issue the potential for huge political embarrassment for the Prime
Minister.