LONDON, Aug. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Criticism from an inquiry into the intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons has sparked the shake-up of spying methods at the MI6 as the British secret intelligence service appointed a senior officer to review the way in which the agency runs its agents, The Times newspaper reported Monday.

    Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former Cabinet Secretary who headed the probe into Britain's pre-war intelligence on Iraq, was highly critical of the credibility of some of MI6 agents in Iraq and called for a tougher validation process.

    According to the paper, the officer has been asked to reassess MI6's process of managing the service's network of agents, including the methods used for validating their bona fides.

    The paper quoted some government sources as saying that John Scarlett, who took over the post of the MI6 chief a week ago, after three years as chairman of the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), had appointed the senior officer to carry out a review over a broad range of the service's functions.

    Scarlett has made it clear to MI6 staff that he intends to implement the necessary reforms once the officer has reported back to him, the paper said. However, Scarlett was not expected to make radical changes in the hierarchy at MI6, which is responsible for Britain's external security.

    Scarlett, nominated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in May to head the MI6, helped draw up the government's 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which claimed that Iraq could deploy banned weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

    Butler's inquiry criticized Scarlett's way to present the MI6 intelligence in the dossier that was behind the government's decision to join the Iraq war.

    Butler ruled on July 14 that it was a "serious failing" the dossier had not contained warnings and caveats about intelligence known to the JIC, which coordinates the country's spying efforts. Enditem