*Ø* Blogmanac | MI6 chief's plan to quit not linked to Iraq, insists No 10

Downing Street, MI6 and the Foreign Office closed ranks yesterday to deny categorically that Sir Richard Dearlove, Britain's top spymaster, is retiring early in the wake of the row over intelligence claims about Iraq's banned weapons programme.

But opposition MPs at Westminster leapt on weekend reports that Sir Richard's widely reported "unhappiness" about the use made of agents' reports has prompted him to let it be known he will quit next summer. That is six months before his 60th birthday, after a five-year stint as head of MI6.

Sir Richard got an extension, which he will now not complete. But friends say his timing is more likely to be tied to the hope that he may head a Cambridge college than to claims that he "is miffed with No 10 - that is wildly implausible", said one high official.

MPs say he could have stayed on if he and No 10 were still on good terms, citing the kind of shadowy intelligence sources that have persistently claimed that No 10 did indeed "sex up" MI6 product to swing voters behind Tony Blair's war in Iraq.

Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called Sir Richard "a distinguished public servant [who] is taking the honourable way out".

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