Blair was ready to quit over Iraq

Mr Blair revealed how close he came to quitting in a newspaper interview.

He said he was ready to give up his job if he was defeated in last month’s vote authorising military action by rebel Labour MPs.

“In the end, it is a decision you put the whole of the premiership on the line for,” he said.

“It was always possible that you could be in that situation. But the point is that some people are going to die as a result of your decision.

“In the end if you lose your premiership, well you lose it. But at least you lose it on the basis of something that you believe in.”

And he admitted that there were times during the conflict when he had felt “really worried” at the way the campaign was going.

“There were moments when it looked like we were getting bogged down and 10 days in you were worried how long was this going to go. Had we miscalculated the degree of the depth of resistance?” he said.

In other developments Saddam Hussein’s murderous half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, is being questioned after being snatched by US special forces in Baghdad.

He has become the Allies’ most important catch so far in their hunt for the leaders of the former Iraqi regime.

Barzan is the former head of Saddam’s dreaded intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, and stands accused of genocide, mass murder and personally taking part in bloodthirsty torture sessions.

One victim, a leading military officer, claimed Barzan invited him over for a drink and then forced him to watch his wife being raped and poisoned.

According to sworn affidavits given to London-based human rights group Indict, he delighted in pulling out victims’ fingernails, pouring boiling water over them and delivering electric shocks.

Meanwhile chief UN arms inspector said his team is ready to get back into Iraq to continue to look for weapons of mass destruction – which have yet to be located.

But Mr Blix said he would not want to work under a new US-led disarmament effort.

“We’re not dogs on a leash,” Hans Blix said. “We have a mandate from the Security Council, and credibility requires that we have independent judgment.”

He said UN teams would be willing to confirm any discoveries of banned weapons the Americans report.

With US troops controlling most of Iraq, Washington has all but replaced the UN inspections with its own search for banned Iraqi weapons.

The US teams have visited between three and four dozen sites, a Pentagon official said.

So far they have found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction but some samples taken yesterday at the Tallil air base needed further testing, the official said.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, led by Mr Blix, pulled out of Iraq shortly before the war and after three months of work on the ground.

Now the search is being conducted by US disarmament teams, made up of military specialists, scientists and former UN inspectors searching for the weapons Iraq was banned from having after the 1991 Gulf War.