COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark's defence minister resigned Friday as lawmakers questioned military intelligence reports the government used to justify its support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Svend Aage Jensby said he was stepping down because of a "smear campaign" by critics who say the government lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. A year after the invasion, no such weapons have been found.

Denmark has nearly 500 troops in Basra and nearby Qurnah, some 400 kilometres southeast of Baghdad.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had just returned from a trip to the United States, said he would appoint Soeren Gade, a 41-year-old lawmaker and former army officer, as the new defence minister on Saturday.

"I deeply regret Svend Aage Jensby's decision," Fogh Rasmussen said.

U.S. President George W. Bush cited Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction as the main reason to invade Iraq. The failure to find them, and the continuing violence, has shaken the resolve of some governments that backed the United States.

On Friday, a Bulgarian parliamentary committee decided to keep that country's 485-member contingent of troops in Iraq despite attacks this week on its base near Karbala.

Jensby, a 59-year-old former police chief, said he was proud of his record. He had recently pushed for reforms allowing the military to participate in more international assignments and better fight terrorism.

"The government has achieved outstanding results and I don't want to burden the government and my family with the smear campaign that has been targeted at my person," Jensby said in a statement.

Danish lawmakers have questioned the military's allegations about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction after a former military intelligence analyst was fired for leaking portions of two confidential reports to a newspaper in February. The analyst claimed that Fogh Rasmussen lied to lawmakers in 2002 when he sought support for the war to oust Saddam.

On Monday, Danish Defence Intelligence Service chief Rear Admiral Joern Olesen said the agency had always believed that Iraq "probably had biological and chemical weapons," adding that the documents were based on information gathered by the United Nations and NATO.

But a Danish intelligence report dated March 7, 2003, concluded that there was no "certain information" that Iraq had working weapons of mass destruction.

Ultimately, Denmark backed the invasion and contributed soldiers and a submarine, saying force was needed because Saddam would not co-operate with UN weapons inspectors.

Jensby's resignation is not expected to jeopardize Fogh Rasmussen's centre-right government, but Anja Westphal, a veteran political commentator with Denmark's public television, called it "a loss of prestige" for the premier.

Jensby was elected to the Danish parliament in 1990 as a member of Fogh Rasmussen's Liberal Party. He had been defence minister since November 2001.