British dossier on Iraq's WMD was based on a gossiping taxi driver's information

London, Dec. 8 (ANI): The British government's 2002 dossier claiming that Saddam Hussain could target UK with chemical missiles on 45 minute's notice was based upon information provided by a gossiping taxi driver who overheard two Iraqi commanders talking about weapons of mass destruction, a Conservative MP has alleged.

The controversial dossier was published in September 2002 to support the British Government's case for invading Iraq in March 2003.

The claim that Saddam could fire chemical weapons at British troops in Cyprus at 45 minutes' notice was one of the most controversial components of the 2002 dossier.

The Times quoted Adam Holloway, a former army officer and Conservative MP, as saying that the taxi driver's recollections of the conversation in the back of his taxi had formed part of the dossier.

Holloway claimed that the taxi driver had fed his information to an MI6 source.

According to him, the MI6 had written a footnote on the page of an intelligence report sent to Downing Street stating that the claim was "verifiably inaccurate".

"But the footnote was ignored by Downing Street," Holloway claimed.

In his report The Failure of British Political and Military Leadership in Iraq, Holloway writes: "Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, SIS [MI6] were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all." (ANI)