Weapons 'mole' missing

2003-07-18 12:07

London - An adviser to the British government on Iraqi arms named as the possible source behind a BBC report claiming Britain "sexed up" its dossier on weapons of mass destruction has been reported missing by his family, police said Friday.

David Kelly, 59, went missing from his home near Abingdon, north of London, on Thursday after telling his wife he was going for a walk, local police said.

The family called police when he did not return home late in the evening.

Kelly faced a grilling on Tuesday by MPs on the foreign affairs committee about what he told BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who filed the original report claiming the government had altered the weapons dossier.

He denied being the main source for Gilligan's report.

In his BBC radio report in May, Gilligan claimed that Alastair Campbell, the government's director of communications and key Blair aide, had ordered that the headline-making claim that Iraq under Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes, be inserted into the government dossier released last September.

The report sparked a furious row with the government, prompting the official parliamentary inquiry into the intelligence presented by Downing Street as a justification for joining the US-led war on Iraq in March.

- AFX