In further embarrassment to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Iraq Survey Group has concluded that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the invasion.

According to The Guardian, the team of weapons inspectors sent in by Washington and London at the end of the war to comb Iraq has admitted in its final report that though the threat of Saddam Hussein was real, there were no stockpiles.

The absence of banned weapons has long been suspected, but the finality of the report's conclusion, together with its timing on the eve of the Labour party conference in Brighton, will be controversial.

Before the invasion, both US President George Bush and Blair had claimed that Hussein had a covert programme to produce chemical and biological weapons, to manufacture ballistic missiles and had renewed search for a nuclear bomb.

Blair did, however, soften his stance in July, telling MPs: "I have to accept that we have not found them and that we may not find them."