Britain's spy chief plans for retirement next year

LONDON -- Britain's foreign intelligence chief will retire next year but the government said Saturday his decision was unrelated to the dossiers that allegedly exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to justify the war in Iraq.

Sir Richard Dearlove will leave his post "on completion of his normal tour of office," the Foreign Office said. "This is in no way connected to events relating to Iraq."

Dearlove, 58, will step down from the post in August 2004.

The Observer newspaper suggested Saturday that Dearlove was leaving his post early because of a rift between the government and the foreign intelligence service MI6 over the use of intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs.

A government dossier claimed Iraq could fire chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

Citing former U.N. weapons adviser David Kelly as its main source, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair's office had "sexed up" that dossier to include the 45-minute claim against the wishes of intelligence chiefs.

Kelly's suicide last month is part of a judicial inquiry.

Another dossier, titled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," which was published in January, included material copied from an American student's thesis which was posted on the Internet.

That revelation proved embarrassing for the government and Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell wrote to Dearlove and "assured the (intelligence) agencies that far greater care would be taken in dealing with anything that might impact on their reputation or their work."