Details of suicide put Blair under fire

LONDON -- The worst political crisis of Prime Minister Tony Blair's career deepened Saturday as new details emerged about the suicide of Dr. David Kelly, a former U.N. weapons inspector at the center of a controversy over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Blair faced some calls for his resignation, and opposition leaders demanded that Parliament convene to investigate Kelly's death and the broader question of whether the government made unfounded claims about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to win public support for the war in Iraq.

Kelly, accused by the Ministry of Defense of providing inaccurate information about government malfeasance to the BBC, slit his left wrist and bled to death Thursday evening, just two days after he was grilled by a hostile parliamentary committee whose members publicly ridiculed him.

At issue was whether Kelly told a BBC reporter that Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell, had "sexed up" a vital dossier about Iraq's weapons by adding a claim that they could be deployed in 45 minute.

BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan made this claim in a report in May, prompting Blair and his top aides to demand that the BBC retract the allegation. The government then named Kelly -- a longtime Ministry of Defense civil servant with a reputation for integrity and skill -- as the probable source of the report.

That sent Kelly -- who maintained before the committee that he told the BBC nothing like what was actually reported -- straight into a media and political firestorm. He was instantly catapulted onto the front pages of virtually all of Britain's newspapers and his testimony was shown on television.

Within two days of this unwanted public exposure, Kelly took his own life. A statement from his widow and children said he had been placed under unbearable strain and implied that politicians and media were responsible for hounding him to his death. "Events over recent weeks made David's life intolerable and all of those involved should reflect long and hard on this fact," the statement read.

Kelly, known for his expertise in chemical and biological weapons, killed himself while walking on a favorite hiking path near his rural home. Police said Saturday that a knife and a packet of strong prescription painkillers were found near his body.

"The post-mortem has revealed that the cause of death was hemorrhaging from a wound to his left wrist," a spokesman said, adding that there were no indications of foul play.

There was apparently no suicide note, although Kelly did send an e- mail to a New York Times reporter several hours before his death claiming that there were many "dark actors" involved in the controversy.

The suicide has highlighted public doubts about the accuracy of the government's claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat to Britain's national security, as Blair claimed during the weeks and months before the war.

There were scattered calls for Blair's resignation Saturday -- an instant poll on Sky News suggested a majority felt he should step down -- and the new controversy seemed certain to overshadow the prime minister's trip to Asia to boost British business interests.

Blair, at a Tokyo press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, refused to answer specific questions about the case but promised again that an independent judicial review will be conducted.

Facing the harshest questioning of his six years in power, a haggard Blair stood stone-faced and silent when a reporter shouted out, "Do you have blood on your hands Mr. Prime Minister? Will you resign over this?"

In response to a different question, he called for an end to the mudslinging that has fouled the political atmosphere in Britain for much of the summer. "I hope we can set aside the speculation and the claims and the counter-claims," he said, suggesting that answers will emerge when the independent inquiry is completed.

It has been a rapid reversal of fortune for Blair, who nevertheless enjoyed numerous standing ovations when he made a rare address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress during a brief visit to Washington on Thursday.

Former actress Glenda Jackson, a member of parliament from Blair's Labor Party, said Saturday night that the prime minister should "bite the bullet" and step down.

There were also calls Saturday for the resignation of Campbell, the communications director accused of exaggerating the Iraqi threat, and Geoff Hoon, the secretary of defense whose department employed Kelly.

Hoon said Saturday that correct procedures were followed after Kelly stepped forward with the information that he had met with the BBC reporter and said he might have been the source of the report about the "sexing up" of the Iraq dossier.

"I, and I know many others, have spent the last 24 hours trying to replay these terrible events in order to try and see whether something could have been done to avoid this tragedy," he said. "All I can say is that I will cooperate fully with the inquiry."

Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith said the inquiry promised by Blair should not be narrowly focused on the events leading up to Kelly's suicide but should be a wide-ranging investigation of whether the government presented a distorted case against Iraq when seeking support for the war.

He said it would be wrong to investigate Kelly's death without looking at the entire question of how intelligence about Iraq was used.

"The two issues are inseparable," he said. "Parliament should be recalled immediately."

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