London, Feb. 1 (Reuters): Most Britons want an independent inquiry into the intelligence Prime Minister Tony Blair cited as the justification to launch a pre-emptive war on Iraq alongside the US last year, new polls showed today.

Polls in The Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times showed 61 per cent and 54 per cent of the British public respectively wanted an investigation into London’s much-criticised evidence of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, mirroring pressure in the US on President George W. Bush to launch a similar inquiry.

The figures give added momentum to calls from British opposition politicians and anti-war protesters for an inquiry into evidence flaunted by Blair’s government as justification to send British troops to join in the US-led attack on Iraq.

“There will be a mounting clamour, particularly given events in Washington over the past few days...that we really need a searching examination into the entire basis on which this government took us into that war,” Charles Kennedy, leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, told Sky television. Opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard told the Sunday Telegraph he would this week table a parliamentary motion urging an inquiry.

Blair was exonerated by judge Lord Hutton of blame for weapons expert David Kelly’s suicide. A newspaper summed it up with a cartoon showing a gleeful Blair exclaiming “I’m off the hook!” as he freed himself from a small fish-hook marked “Hutton” — unaware of a vast anchor-like hook holding him from behind marked “WMD”.

BBC bullied

Greg Dyke, who resigned as director general of the BBC last week after Hutton criticised the BBC in his inquiry into Kelly’s death, today said Blair’s government systematically bullied the broadcaster on its Iraq war coverage, bombarding it with complaints to try to push its own point of view.