Arab commentators have derided the promises made by US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to reveal a dossier detailing Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction programme.

A front-page editorial in the Iraqi official newspaper Al-Thawrah on Friday said the dossier consisted of "mere lies" to justify an attack on Baghdad.

Blair invites ridicule for being Bush's poodle and lapdog

The Gulf Today

"Blair claims his alleged dossier proves that Iraq is seeking to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, but how can Iraq attempt this when it lacks the ability, equipment, machinery or intention to produce them?" it said.

"His alleged dossier is nothing but a collection of reports assembled in the corridors of the intelligence services and lacks evidence," the editorial said.

Al-Thawrah again challenged Mr Blair to send British experts and reporters to Iraq to check out the veracity of the dossier.

"Blair is dishonest, and his alleged dossier is mere lies fabricated to justify a disgraceful policy that harms not only Iraq but also Britain, and pushes it into this escapade," it said.

'Lapdog Blair'

The Dubai-based newspaper The Gulf Today was equally scathing about Mr Blair's dossier.

In a commentary on Thursday it said the dossier was unlikely to contain any new information, as was the case with previous claims of new evidence against Osama Bin Laden.

Intelligence services have failed to find a single barrel of chemical materials or weapon of mass destruction.

Qatari commentator Mazin Hammad

"Blair invites ridicule for being Bush's poodle and lapdog," it said.

"When Britons saw him with thumbs tucked in his belt cowboy-style ahead of his news conference on Iraq, his political stance on the Iraq issue crumbled... A body-language expert even suggested that Blair is subconsciously mimicking Bush."

The Gulf Today says US Congressional pressure is mounting on President Bush to produce ironclad evidence before risking American lives, and that only Mr Blair still backs his "cowboy trail to war".

Anti-Arab grudge

Jordanian commentator Khalid Mahadin sees the dossier as part of a plot by the Christian Right and Israel to destroy Arab, Muslim and "true Christian" culture.

Saddam: Targeted as part of an anti-Arab grudge some papers say

Writing in the partly-government-owned Al-Ra'y on Thursday, he said Mr Blair's "fantastic announcement only shows the extent of the grudge the United Kingdom, United States and the Israeli entity harbour towards everything Arab and Muslim".

The dossier, he said, was a British intelligence fabrication aimed at portraying enfeebled Iraq as a "formidable power capable of destroying any capital oppose to its colossal force".

He asked why the UK government had not produced a similar report on Israel's weapons of mass destruction and the "crimes committed every hour against the Palestinian people".

'Babylonian revenge'

Qatari commentator Mazin Hammad wasted little time in dismissing the dossier.

"Tony Blair is busy collecting evidence to justify the use of force, but we do not know where he will find this evidence when all the intelligence services in the West have failed to find a single barrel of chemical materials or any weapon of mass destruction," he wrote in Al-Watan on Thursday.

Mr Hammad sees President Bush as acting on behalf of Israel and the "Israeli-occupied Congress" in launching a series of wars in the Middle East to destroy all states that oppose Israel.

He suggests sarcastically that if the US were to step aside and allow Israel to carry off Iraq's head on a platter itself, this "moment of revenge for the Babylonian Captivity might satisfy Sharon's blood lust".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.