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British MPs call for broad probe after suicide
1:41 p.m. & 2003-07-21

The Globe & Mail

http://www.globeandmail.com

British MPs call for broad probe after suicide

London � A judge investigating the suicide of a Defence Ministry weapons adviser should also examine the British government's use of intelligence to justify war with Iraq, opposition MPs said Monday.

Microbiologist David Kelly was the source for a disputed British Broadcasting Corp. report that Prime Minister Tony Blair's office doctored an intelligence dossier on Iraqi weapons to bolster the case for war. On Friday, Dr. Kelly's body was found near his home in central England. One of his wrists had been slashed.

Lord Hutton, one of the Law Lords who form Britain's highest court of appeal, said Monday that his inquiry into the suicide would investigate the "circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Kelly."

"It will be for me to decide, as I think right within my terms of reference, the matters which should be the subject of my investigation," Judge Hutton said, without elaborating.

It was unclear whether Judge Hutton intended to meet demands for a broader inquiry into the government's handling of intelligence on Iraqi weapons.

Mr. Blair has said he is prepared to testify before the inquiry, investigation, but on Monday he suggested that the scope would be limited to Dr. Kelly's death.

"This is a very exceptional situation, which is why we decided to hold a judicial inquiry, because of the concern that there was," he said during a trip to China. "Of course, there will be continuing debate as to whether the war was justified or not. I happen to believe it was."

Opposition Conservative Party MP Oliver Letwin called for the inquiry to examine whether Mr. Blair's office exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi weapons.

"While there certainly does need to be an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Dr. Kelly's death, there are a very large numbers of questions, which all centre on the issue of whether the public can trust what the government tells it and which relate to the information given to parliament and the public during the lead-up to war in Iraq," Mr. Letwin told BBC radio.

Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary, said it would be impossible for Judge Hutton to get to the bottom of Dr. Kelly's death without wading into the wider question of the government's case for war.

Mr. Cook, who quit the cabinet in protest against the war, said the government should "accept the inevitable" and authorize the broader probe.

"The pity is that it did not do so a couple of months ago when it first became evident that it could not find any real weapons of mass destruction," he wrote in The Independent newspaper.

Judge Hutton did not give a date for the start of his investigation, which he said he would largely conduct in public. He added that the government had pledged full cooperation.

Dr. Kelly's body was found three days after he testified to a parliamentary committee about his unauthorized encounter with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who on May 29 quoted an anonymous source as saying officials had "sexed up" evidence about Iraqi weapons to justify war.

Mr. Gilligan said the officials had insisted on publishing a claim that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein could deploy some chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, despite intelligence experts' doubts. The journalist later pointed to Alastair Campbell, Mr. Blair's communications director, as the key figure in rewriting the dossier. Mr. Campbell vehemently denied it.

Politicians across the ideological spectrum have accused the BBC of inaccurately reporting Dr. Kelly's comments, citing his testimony that he did not recognize the journalist's most damaging claims as his own. Mr. Gilligan has said he did not misquote or misrepresent Dr. Kelly's remarks.

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