Britain sets Jan.28 as date for David Kelly report
( 2004-01-16 14:42) (Agencies)
The report of a judicial inquiry into the suicide of British weapons expert David Kelly will be published on January 28, a day that could prove to be a turning point in the political life of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Kelly took his own life in July just days after he was exposed as the source of a BBC report two months earlier which alleged that Blair's government had "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
His death hurled Blair -- who, as the staunchest international ally of US President George W. Bush, led a skeptical Britain into the Iraq war -- into his worst crisis since he moved into Downing Street in May 1997.
Ending weeks of speculation, the Department for Constitutional Affairs said the findings of Lord Brian Hutton, the veteran jurist who headed the inquiry, would be given to parliament on January 28.
"On the day of publication, Lord Hutton will make a statement summarising his report... at the Royal Courts of Justice," the palatial court house in London where he conducted public hearings in August through October, it said.
Advance copies will be sent to selected key players in the Kelly saga, but only after they sign pledges that they will not leak the contents.
They include Downing Street, Kelly's family, the BBC, and BBC reporters Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts who both used Kelly as a source in their reports on the way intelligence was used in the run-up to war.
January 28 is just one day after the Commons is to vote on Blair's highly controversial university funding reforms which, if approved, will triple the cost of tuition in England and Wales from 2006.
Kelly, 59, a soft-spoken former UN arms inspector in Iraq, worked at the Ministry of Defence as a specialist on Saddam Hussein's quest for chemical, biologial and nuclear weapons in violation of UN resolutions.
Gilligan and Watts both met him before Gilligan aired a report on May 29 citing unnamed intelligence sources as alleging that Downing Street had "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
The document -- which notably claimed that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes -- was a key part of Blair's efforts to build public support for joining the US-led war.
Downing Street fiercely denied the allegations, triggering a particularly ugly row with the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), the world's biggest and best-known public broadcaster, which refused to retract the story.
In testimony before Hutton, it emerged that Blair, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and other senior officials were all major players in the decision to expose Kelly as the source of the allegations.
Kelly -- used to a life in the shadows -- was then forced to face a parliament committee that was looking into the allegations. There he denied that he had been the main source of Gilligan's report.
But just a few days later, on July 18, as Blair began an East Asia tour, Kelly was found dead on a footpath near his Oxfordshire home with a slit wrist -- a tragic turn that hurled Blair into his worst crisis yet.
Blair immediately asked Hutton -- a highly respected judge from Northern Ireland -- to conduct a full inquiry. On his flight to Hong Kong, he also denied that he had ever authorised exposing Kelly.
Despite unrelenting pressure from the main opposition Conservative party, Blair has refused to say anything more about the affair, pending Hutton's findings.
He stuck to that line at his monthly press conference in London on Thursday, before the January 28 was announced.
"We set up this inquiry with an independent judge because I thought it was important that the public be given the facts," Blair said. "It should be allowed to make its judgement."
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