In an interview with The Observer newspaper, Blair indicated he would serve a full term as prime minister if re-elected at the next general election, due mid-2006 at the latest.

"Of course. I mean, if you stand, that's what you do. And I've said I want to carry on doing the job until the job is done," Blair told the paper as his party's annual conference was set to open on England's south coast later Sunday.

In a damaging blow to the prime minister, polls showed Labour has slumped to its lowest level since 1987, a decade before Blair won his first general election.

Almost half of all voters, including many Labour supporters, want Blair to quit over his handling of the Iraq war.

Blair, echoing his comrade in arms President Bush, also reiterated yesterday he had no regrets about launching the war that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "I don't apologise for Iraq. I am proud of what we have done."

Blair, like Bush in a radio address on Saturday, said he had no doubt Saddam had been "a serious threat to his region and to the wider world."

Blair's government has been savaged in recent weeks by an official inquiry that has spotlighted the debate surrounding the prime minister's justification for attacking Iraq.

But Blair urged people to wait for the US arms report and he dismissed remarks by former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix that Saddam had probably destroyed most of his weapons in 1991.

"Why on earth was he obstructing the (UN) inspectors all the way through the 1990s? Why did we have to go, as we did with America, to bomb Baghdad in 1998 when the inspectors were driven out?" Blair said.

A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times newspaper has put Labour on 30 percent -- three points behind the Conservatives and neck-and-neck with the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third main party.

For the first time, all three parties are tied on 31 percent, according to an ICM poll in the News of the World.

It is Labour's lowest rating since Neil Kinnock was leader of the party and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the Conservative government.

Worryingly for Blair, voter disillusionment is reflected among Labour party activists.

A YouGov poll of 301 party members for The Observer newspaper found that 41 percent want him to stand down before the next election.

ICM's poll found that 64 percent of voters no longer trust Blair and 48 percent want him to quit.

Half the British public believe Blair should resign, according to a Mori survey for the Financial Times published Saturday.