Arms expert’s death will haunt Blair

VERY few things are certain in politics. But the body found lying in the rolling south Oxfordshire countryside at 9.20 yesterday morning is certain to come back to haunt British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Dr David Kelly, an official adviser on Iraqi arms, is believed to have killed himself after a week of intense political pressure, where he was seen by many as a scapegoat for the Labour Government.

Dr Kelly said goodbye to his wife, Janice, on Thursday afternoon at 3pm and said he was going for a walk. He had been grilled on Tuesday by a House of Commons Committee about his meeting with a BBC journalist. By 11.45pm he had failed to return, and Janice and the couple's children, eldest daughter Sian, 32, and twins Rachel and Ellen, 30, contacted the police. Yesterday morning, as Mr Blair flew from Washington to Tokyo, he was informed of the discovery of the body about five miles from Dr Kelly's home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. No note was found either at the scene or at Dr Kelly's house. Dr Kelly was not a licensed firearms holder, a police spokesman said in response to questions about whether he had died of gunshot wounds.

So who was Dr Kelly and why is his name likely to be forever linked with Mr Blair for the rest of his political career? The controversy began when the BBC reported that Blair's spokesman Alastair Campbell had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, to justify going to war with Iraq. Mr Blair and Mr Campbell furiously denied this and instigated a witch-hunt for the BBC's source on the story. Dr Kelly came forward last week to admit he had spoken to the BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan. However, Dr Kelly said he didn't believe he was the source for Mr Gilligan's story.

But when Dr Kelly, 59, gave evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee investigating the dossier some MPs suggested he had been set up as a fall guy by the Government.

One Tory MP on the committee, John Stanley, told Dr Kelly he had acted in a "proper and honourable manner" in coming forward to suggest that he may have been Mr Gilligan's source but had been "thrown to the wolves" by the Ministry of Defence. Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay said: "Have you ever felt like the fall guy? You have been set up haven't you?" he told Dr Kelly.

Dr Kelly met Mr Gilligan in the Charing Cross Hotel in London Mr Gilligan had admitted meeting his source in a central London hotel a week before Mr Gilligan broadcast his story on the Radio 4 Today programme about the Iraq dossier.

Dr Kelly, an employee in the MoD's counter-proliferation and arms control secretariat, said he had contacted his line manager at the MoD after Mr Gilligan gave evidence to the committee because he thought it was possible he was the source. But Dr Kelly said he did not think he could have been the source for the story. Dr Kelly told MPs that Mr Gilligan's account of his conversation with his source for the story was so different from their conversation he did not believe he could be the source.

When Dr Kelly was asked at the committee how if felt to be the fall guy, he responded: "I accept the process". Clearly, however, he didn't accept the process and it was hurting him very deeply.

Tom Mangold, a journalist and close friend, said he had spoken to Dr Kelly's wife Janice yesterday morning. She had said her husband was deeply unhappy and furious at how events had unfurled. Mr Mangold said: "She didn't use the word depressed, but she said he was very very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in."

Mr Mangold said Dr Kelly was a source to many reporters. His ambition was to help serious journalists understand a complex topic.

Mr Mangold expressed anger at the way Dr Kelly had been treated in recent weeks. He said: "If Dave Kelly is dead, he is dead because of something that happened in journalism which means that we all have to look to our consciences," he said.

Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle, a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, said Dr Kelly's disappearance and the discovery of a body added weight to demands for an independent judicial inquiry into the question of how the Government justified its decision to take military action.

He told Sky News: "We owe it to Parliament and to the people, and not least to the family of Dr Kelly, to get to the bottom of this in a way which is completely untarnished."

Tory MP Richard Ottaway, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said the political ramifications of the news were clear: "It brings now into question this whole regime of spin and manipulation ... by the Government and its advisers. For this to happen is a ghastly, ghastly tragedy."

Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Donald Anderson rejected the idea that the committee's questioning of Dr Kelly on Tuesday had been unduly harsh."I am sure that any objective person, looking at the transcript or listening to the hearing, would see that the tone was not aggressive at all," he said.