"The joint defense and foreign affairs committees will investigate to determine who is responsible for this incident," said Stanislaw Janas, head of the parliamentary defense committee, speaking on public radio.

"The information had a bomb effect," said Pawel Piskorski, member of the foreign affairs committee.

"Its release without adequate verification risks undermining Poland's credibility in the international arena for a very long time," he said.

The Polish defence ministry said Saturday that a Polish patrol had found the four anti-aircraft missiles south of Baghdad.

But on Monday, the military was forced to backtrack, following a strong rebuke from France, stating that the troops made an "error of interpretation" when they said they had found the missiles manufactured that year.

The missiles had the markings that read 07-01-KND 2003, which the troops mistook for the year of production.

Chirac strongly denied Saturday the remarks of the Polish defense ministry, according to which Roland (short-range surface-to-air) anti-aircraft missiles built in 2003 might have been found in Iraq.

"There cannot be any missiles there in 2003 because the missiles haven't been built for the past 15 years," Chirac said at the European summit in Rome on Saturday.

Poland's defense ministry is scheduled on Monday to disclose the results of its internal investigation into who is personally responsible for the blunder.

SPACE.WIRE