LONDON (Reuters) – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will make his hugely-anticipated appearance before an official inquiry into the Iraq War in late January or early February, the inquiry team said on Tuesday.

And such is the demand to see Blair's appearance that the inquiry will hold a ballot to allocate public seats, while a third of the 60 or so available spaces will be allocated to families of soldiers who died in the war.
Blair, prime minister for a decade from 1997, ordered 45,000 British troops to take part in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, a move critics say broke international law.
He is also accused of deceiving the public over claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
No such weapons were ever found, and in a BBC interview last month Blair said he believed it would still have been right to oust Saddam even if he had known Iraq had no WMDs.
The comment added to the public desire to hear Blair give evidence to the five-man Iraq inquiry team which is examining Britain's role before, during and after the conflict.