Germany and France will finally get involved in the rebuilding of Iraq if Nato agrees later this month to help train Iraq’s fledgling security forces, Tony Blair said today.

The Prime Minister told the Commons Liaison Committee that he hoped agreement would be reached at the Nato summit in Brussels on February 22.

This would get Germany and France, previously outspoken critics of the war in Iraq, involved in efforts to rebuild the country, he said.

Mr Blair and George Bush first raised the prospect of Nato training help when they met at the G8 summit in Georgia last July. Mr Blair, appearing before the group made up of the chairmen of MPs’ select committees, denied there had been a diplomatic failure in getting those opponents of the war involved in its aftermath.

He said: "I think you may find, at the Nato meeting at the end of February, we get agreement on help for training Iraqi security forces. I hope that will see some of the countries that haven’t been involved either in the conflict or its aftermath involved in that."

Mr Blair, who was questioned for two-and-a-half hours, denied that the fact that a number of countries were now pulling their troops out of Iraq represented a diplomatic failure. He said: "That would be unfair because for a lot of these countries that are taking out their troops, they continue very strongly to support the presence of the multinational force there - it’s just that they are bound by parliamentary resolutions to take their troops out after a certain time."

Mr Blair acknowledged that the coalition had faced a "dilemma" over whether to attack the insurgents who had built a stronghold of Fallujah. He defended the decision to take the city.

He said: "We were never under any illusions at all that removing them was going to be difficult and bloody. But on the other hand we took the view - and I think in retrospect this judgment actually has been proved right, not wrong - that it was absolutely necessary to show to the Iraqi people that there was no ‘no go’ area for Iraqi forces and the multi-national force."

Mr Blair said he hoped that once the new Iraqi government was in place, the coalition would be able to set out plans for training Iraqi forces to take more responsibility for security.

He said the coalition was considering publishing a paper by retired US General Gary Luck on building up the Iraqi forces.

"I think that we will be able to give some idea of what the next steps and over what period the Iraqi-isation of security will take place," he said. "There is a need for quantity in terms of police and army but there is also a need for quality - for crack troops and forces who are able to go in and handle the insurgents."

Mr Blair said democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq and a Middle East settlement would all be a "big blow" against global terrorism. He went on: "Nobody now believes that this terrorism can be defeated by security or military means alone. It has also to be defeated by the promotion of democracy, human rights and bringing freedom to people. I think that’s also at stake in Iraq.

"One lesson we are learning is that wherever there’s repression, wherever there are failed states, these are places where terrorism can breed."

He said the main impediment to development work in Iraq was the lack of security. He said: "If what happens is someone gets a reconstruction project under way, then the three people organising it are assassinated, the next day you don’t find many people turning up on it. And that’s what’s happening."

But he forecast that once security was under control, "the prospects for Iraq are enormous" and the port of Um Qasr in the British sector would be a major commercial gateway for the region.

Mr Blair warned that it would be wrong for Iran or Syria to assume that it was now in their interests to allow insurgents to cross into Iraq in order to weaken the Americans and reduce the chance of an attack on themselves. "I think if they were to make that calculation it would be a very severe miscalculation," he said.

Asked whether Iran was a failed state or a sponsor of terrorism, the premier replied: "It certainly does sponsor terrorism, there’s no doubt about that at all. I hope very much that if we can make progress in the Middle East, Iran realises it’s got an obligation to help that, not hinder it."

Mr Blair said he believed the majority Shia population of Iraq, with ties to the Iranian regime, wanted "an Iraq run by Iraqis, not by an outside power, including Iran".

Asked whether anybody would believe him if he said a military strike against Iran was needed because it possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Prime Minister replied: "I think it depends what the evidence base is. I don’t think it’s disputed that there is an issue to do with Iran and nuclear weapons capability. That’s why France and Germany have been working with the UK over it."

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