LONDON, ENGLAND - Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Friday faced allegations that he under-funded Britain's military costing soliders' lives when he was finance minister, in a grilling at the inquiry into the Iraq war.

Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2003 when then premier Tony Blair took British forces into the invasion alongside the United States.

Witnesses to the inquiry, including the defence minister at the time of the invasion, Geoff Hoon, have said the military lacked sufficient funding and equipment for years before the war.

Adding to the pressure, a former chief of the defence staff has alleged British soldiers' lives were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because Brown turned down pleas for better equipment.

General Charles Guthrie, who led the armed forces from 1997 to 2001, told Friday's edition of The Times: 'Not fully funding the army in the way they had asked... undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers.

'He should be asked why he was so unsympathetic towards defence and so sympathetic to other departments.'

The former head of special forces, Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb, also weighed in against Brown, telling the Daily Telegraph British troops were deprived of the right equipment to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The families of soldiers killed in combat have already asked why the government did not equip troops with more helicopters and more robust vehicles which could resist roadside bombs.

Brown has insisted that spending on defence is sufficient, but his appearance before the inquiry in London is fraught with risk ahead of a general election widely expected to take place in May.

Blair robustly defended his reasons for going to war when he gave evidence in January, but Brown ' his principal and often bitter rival within the Labour Party ' has kept largely silent about his involvement in the decision.

Inquiry chairman John Chilcot, a retired senior civil servant, initially said he would not call Brown and other serving ministers until after the vote to avoid the hearing 'being used as a platform for political advantage.'

Following pressure from political rivals however, the prime minister offered to appear before the election.

After two years trailing behind the main opposition Conservatives in the opinion polls, Labour has recently cut the gap to between two and five percentage points.

Any fresh revelations linking him to the still-divisive Iraq conflict ' seen by many as a black mark on Labour's 13 years in power ' could be highly damaging.

The British military lost 179 soldiers in the Iraq campaign and is currently engaged in fierce fighting in Afghanistan, where casualties since 2001 are edging up to 270.

Brown was finance minister from 1997 until 2007, when he took over from Blair as prime minister.

Jocelyn Cockburn, a lawyer for relatives of soldiers killed in lightly armoured Snatch Land Rovers in Iraq, said in Thursday's edition of The Times that she was urging Chilcot to challenge Brown over funding concerns.

'Specifically, was he aware of concerns around the lack of armoured vehicles and did he receive any requests for funding (particularly in the period 1997-2006) to purchase armoured vehicles?' she wrote in a letter to Chilcot.

The use of the Snatch vehicles has been the focus of growing anger in Britain because of their apparent inability to withstand so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in both Iraq and Afghanistan.