EAST Lancashire MP Gordon Prentice has told Tony Blair not to attack Iraq without a new United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising military action.

As the Prime Minister prepared to meet sceptical Labour MPs at Westminster, the Pendle government backbencher said to justify a war there had to be "compelling evidence of weapons of mass destruction being harboured by Saddam Hussein''.

Mr Prentice is one of 130 Labour MPs to harbour doubts about Mr Blair's tough line supporting US President George W Bush. On Monday the Prime Minister said he would prefer a second UN resolution, but was prepared to go to war without one.

Yesterday he was trying to win over his backbenchers to his policy at the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, stressing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and was trying to develop nuclear ones.