Ministers face public grilling on Kelly death

BRITISH government ministers and BBC bosses are facing a public grilling on their treatment of Dr David Kelly, after the law lord appointed to investigate the civil servant’s death announced yesterday he would not hold his inquiry behind closed doors.

Lord Hutton asserted the independence of his inquiry with a declaration that he would decide the scope of his questions and the choice of witnesses "as I see fit within my terms of reference".

He promised to hold his investigation into the government weapons expert's apparent suicide "mostly in public" and to publish a report "as soon as possible".

British Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately confirmed his readiness to give evidence in public, and to break off from a family holiday in Barbados to do so if necessary.

Downing Street made clear it expected Lord Hutton to stick closely to the terms set by Mr Blair "urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly".

But opponents of the war said that his death could not be explained without reference to the British government's handling of intelligence information in the run-up to the conflict.

Dr Kelly's body was found in woodland near his Oxfordshire home on Friday, three days after he gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry. A coroner's court yesterday morning heard he died the previous day due to loss of blood from a cut to his left wrist.

The BBC confirmed on Sunday that he was the main source for a controversial May 29 report by reporter Andrew Gilligan, alleging the British government had exaggerated intelligence evidence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Mr Gilligan said his source had informed him members of the intelligence community were unhappy about the inclusion in a government dossier last September of claims that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said: "Clearly, in getting to the bottom of this tragedy, Lord Hutton will have to touch on some of the wider aspects of the case the Government made for going to war, the veracity of intelligence information, the use the Government made of that information and any role that Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence may have played in Dr Kelly's name being made public."

He warned that "all hell will break loose" if the British government sought to impede any line of inquiry Lord Hutton chose to pursue or to deny him access to intelligence officers and secret papers.

Asked during his visit to Beijing why he was ready to sanction a judicial inquiry into the scientist's death, but not into the decision to go to war, Mr Blair responded: "This is a very special situation which is why we decided to hold a judicial inquiry, because of the concern that there was. Of course, there will be continuing debate as to whether the war was justified or not. I happen to believe it was."

Former Labour minister Glenda Jackson, who has called for Mr Blair's resignation, told Sky News: "Regrettably it doesn't seem to me that this inquiry is going to be as wide-ranging or as deep as I would like it to be.

"If this is a very narrow inquiry, the underlying questions which I think had a contributory part to play in this terrible, terrible tragedy are still waiting there to be answered and it is clearly the Government's duty to answer them."