U.S. President George Bush defended his decision to go into Iraq, after the White House acknowledged that one of its claims about Iraq's weapons was false.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace," Bush said during a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki.

"And there is no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power."

His comments come one day after the White House acknowledged that Bush had misspoke in his State of the Union address earlier this year when he said Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

While Bush did not address the misstatement directly, he did say he had no doubt that in the end, "the facts will show the world the truth.

"There's going to be, you know, a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history, and I can understand that. But I'm absolutely confident in the decision I made," Bush said.

In Britain, Blair was once again on the defensive after being accused of misleading the government about intelligence obtained in a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Opposition Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith said that until Blair apologizes to Parliament "his trust will plummet, and nobody will believe a word he says anymore."

Blair insisted that information in the dossier was correct and came from intelligence sources. "I do not accept that Parliament was misled in any way at all," he said.

A parliamentary report has concluded that Blair inadvertently misled the house about the origin of materials released in February. The documents included material from a 12-year-old student thesis copied from the Internet.

Claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction were used by the U.S. and Britain as justification for war in Iraq.

Democrats call for probe

In the U.S., Democrats say the acknowledgment by the White House justifies a broad review of how the administration used prewar intelligence in Iraq.

"It's a recognition that we were provided faulty information," Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. "And I think it's all the more reason why a full investigation of all of the facts surrounding this situation be undertaken."

Joe Wilson, a former acting ambassador to Iraq, was sent to Africa to investigate the claim. He said he told Washington the claim was false but they used it anyway.

"They were using selective use of facts and intelligence to bolster a decision in a case that had already been made. A decision that had been made to go to war," Wilson said.

The information on the uranium was reportedly based on a single document of a letter or letters between officials in Iraq and Niger that turned out to be a poor forgery.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking to reporters travelling with Bush to South Africa, said Wednesday that "this type of information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech."

Just last month, one of the president's closest advisers, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, denied she or anyone else at the White House knew the intelligence was bad.

"Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the Agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery," Rice said.

The president's critics say it's now time for him to speak out.

"He needed to apologize to the American people and to the world for using intelligence that turned out to be false and he hasn't," foreign policy analyst Miriam Pemberton said.

With reports from CTV's Alan Fryer and The Associated Press