Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski accepted Eugeniusz Mleczak's resignation, a statement carried by the Polish news agency PAP said.

The defence ministry said Saturday that a Polish patrol had found four anti-aircraft missiles south of Baghdad, an erroneous claim leading to several investigations in Poland.

Mleczak had spoken out without obtaining the necessary authorization, Szmajdzinski said.

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.

French President Jacques Chirac strongly denied the claims Saturday.

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

Prime Minister Leszek Miller, also at the summit, personally spoke with Chirac to calm frayed French nerves over the matter, which if true would have been in violation of UN sanctions against Iraq and then president Saddam Hussein.

An internal investigation in the ministry and the army has begun, with a report due to be presented on Monday, while the Polish parliament is also looking into the matter.

"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.

"This information had the force of an atomic bomb. Its release without adequate verification risks undermining Poland's credibility in the international arena for a very long time," Pawel Piskorski said.

The new spokesman of the defense ministry is Adam Stasinski, the statement said, who until now was deputy spokesman.

France was a strong opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, while Poland supported the effort and commands a 9,000-strong international force in Iraq as part of stabilising the country after the war.

SPACE.WIRE