TONY BLAIR last night personally demanded that the BBC withdraw its claim that Downing Street “sexed up” intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The prime minister upped the stakes in the row with the corporation by saying the charge was “about as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be”.

But Greg Dyke, the BBC’s director-general, is set to stand firm, urging the corporation’s board of governors to issue a statement endorsing the report that was aired on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Blair fell short of demanding an apology from the BBC for claiming No 10 embellished information for inclusion in the dossier published in September against the wishes of the intelligence services. But he said in an interview: “It is untrue, that statement is untrue.

“The idea that I or anyone else in my position frankly would start altering intelligence evidence or saying to the intelligence services I am going to insert this, is absurd.

“There couldn’t be a more serious charge, that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified. You could not make a more serious charge against a prime minister. The charge happens to be wrong. I think everyone now accepts that that charge is wrong.”

His comments, in an interview in The Observer, come on the eve of publication of a crucial report on the Iraq dossier affair by MPs. Although the foreign affairs select committee will clear Alastair Campbell, Blair’s director of communications, of sexing up intelligence reports, Tory MPs have ensured that their dissenting amendments to the majority report by the Labour-dominated committee are printed in the main section of the document.

Some MPs on the committee believe they have been given only a partial view of Campbell’s role in putting the government’s case for war. They point out that the BBC’s source for its claim that No 10 hardened intelligence reports was accurate on some points and cannot simply be dismissed. And a senior BBC source claimed last night that a key conclusion of the report clearing Campbell came about only because of the casting vote of the chairman of the committee, Labour MP Donald Anderson.

Dyke will make an admission in a briefing to the extraordinary meeting of BBC governors tonight that the corporation cannot prove its claim Downing Street sexed up the September dossier, but he will nevertheless refuse to admit defeat.

A BBC source said: “We can’t prove it, but we have a very good source. We believe it was right, therefore, to put it in the public domain.”

Dyke is expected to urge the board to issue a statement unambiguously standing by the story broadcast by Radio 4’s Today programme May 29 and to say that any sign of weakness could set a dangerous precedent.

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