A senior church leader last night criticised Prime Minister Tony Blair for not listening to opponents during the war in Iraq.

Dr David Hope, the Archbishop of York, also questioned the legitimacy of the war and warned Mr Blair he would have to answer to God.

Dr Hope, who is Britain's second most senior church leader, urged people to pray for Mr Blair and called on him to exercise a calm, quiet authority.

On the war, Dr Hope said: "One of the qualities of a good leader is that they have to be really attentive to the views of the people. It seemed at one stage that was not happening."

In an interview with a national newspaper, he raised questions about the justification for the war.

"We still have not found any weapons of mass destruction anywhere," he said.

"Are we likely to find any? Does that alter the view as to whether we really ought to have mounted the invasion or not?

Undoubtedly, a very wicked leader has been removed, but there are wicked leaders in other parts of the world."

Dr Hope told the Prime Minister: "There is a higher authority before whom one day we all have to give an account."

The Bishop of Durham, the Right Reverend Tom Wright, also weighed into the row.

In a newspaper interview, Dr Wright said: "For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing.

"This is not to deny there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to deal with it."

The comments came as Mr Blair faced a fresh wave of attacks for "deceiving" the country over Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal.

The most potentially embarrassing development came when the US official running Iraq, Paul Bremer, rejected the Prime Minister's claim that evidence of Saddam's hidden weapons laboratories had been unearthed.

In a Christmas message to troops, the Prime Minister said the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had found "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories".

It showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to conceal weapons, he told British forces.

Mr Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said that was not true.

"That is not what (ISG chief) David Kay has said," he told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said Mr Blair's information came from the group hunting for Saddam's arsenal.

Meanwhile, former International Development Secretary Clare Short stepped up her calls for Mr Blair to resign over the war, saying his actions were worse than those of MP John Profumo.

Profumo, the Secretary of State for War from 1960 to 1963, resigned after lying to the Commons about his relationship with a prostitute.

Labour's Diane Abbott warned that Mr Blair he had risked backbench rebellions by making loyal MPs feel like "pillocks" over the Iraq war.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook warned Mr Blair that he may never win back public trust after the Iraq war.

Mr Cook, who quit the Cabinet over the war, said that the lack of trust had undermined the Government's credibility.

Writing in The Independent, he urged the Prime Minister to make a New Year's resolution to admit that he was wrong about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Cook said a survey at the weekend, which showed Mr Blair was the least trustworthy politician in the UK, was largely because he "sold a pup" to the public over the weapons claims.

"It is undignified for the Prime Minister, and worrying for his nation, to go on believing a threat which everybody else can see was a fantasy," he said.