LONDON, England (AFP) — Tony Blair’s former chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell fiercely denied yesterday “sexing up” a dossier which claimed Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes ahead of the 2003 war.

In a defiant appearance before a public inquiry on the conflict, Campbell said that while the highly controversial document could have been “clearer”, he still defended “every single word” of it — and the invasion itself.

“I think Britain as a country should feel incredibly proud of the role it played in taking on one of the most brutal, barbarous regimes in history,” said Campbell, one of the former prime minister’s closest allies.

The first big name to appear before the Chilcot inquiry, he appeared days before Blair gives evidence later this month or early next month.

Current prime minister Gordon Brown– who Campbell said was one of the “key ministers” Blair consulted in the run-up to war — will appear after this year’s general election, expected in May.

A large part of Campbell’s evidence focused on a September 2002 dossier which the British government issued to explain its growing concerns over Iraq, six months before Britain joined the invasion.

The BBC subsequently reported that Campbell had “sexed up” the report, which claimed Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes, sparking an angry row with Downing Street.

Yesterday, Campbell again insisted he had never tried to “beef up” anything written by the dossier’s author, John Scarlett, then chairman of a high-level committee advising the government on intelligence.

“At no point did anybody from the prime minister down say to anybody within the intelligence services: ‘You have got to tailor it to fit this judgement or that judgement,'” Campbell said.

“The whole way through, it could not have been made clearer to everybody that nothing would override the intelligence judgements and that John Scarlett was the person who, if you like, had the single pen.”

Campbell, Downing Street’s former director of communications and strategy, resigned in August 2003, the month after Ministry of Defence weapons expert Dr David Kelly was found dead near his home with slashed wrists.

Kelly believed he may have been the source of the BBC’s “sexing up” story and officials confirmed his name as such to some reporters.

At the time, Campbell insisted he wanted to resign to spend more time with his family well before Kelly’s death and a previous official inquiry exonerated him over the affair. The Chilcot inquiry is not covering Kelly’s death.

Its committee members have faced criticism over alleged soft questioning of witnesses, but the ex-BBC journalist who made the original “sexing up” claim was among those to praise their hard line with him yesterday.

“Campbell, inevitably, ran a classic ‘no surrender’ defence,” Andrew Gilligan wrote on his blog for the Daily Telegraph.

“But the behaviour of Chilcot’s committee, the people on the other side of the table, was much more interesting and unexpected. They asked often exactly the right questions.”