Britain’s secret service, MI6, has been at the forefront of a long running operation to garner public support for the use of military force against Iraq, The Sunday Times reports today.

The newspaper says the Government yesterday admitted that MI6 orchestrated Operation Mass Appeal, a propaganda programme to place stories in the mass media about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The revelation comes as Lord Hutton’s prepares to publish his findings next month into the tragic death of Dr David Kelly, the weapons expert who committed suicide after being “outed” as the source of the BBC’s report into Downing Street’s alleged doctoring of a key Iraqi intelligence dossier.

The MI6 organised a propaganda campaign from the late 1990s to spread dis-information about Saddam’s development of nerve agents and lethal weapons.

Scott Ritter, a weapons inspector, has already claimed that MI6 recruited him in 1997 to push on the propaganda effort.

Mr Ritter said last week: “The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was.”