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Kelly: Blair counts cost
21/07/2003 11:42 - (SA)
London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has suffered huge political damage as a result of the death of an arms expert at the centre of a row over whether the government "sexed up" evidence on Iraq, a poll said on Monday.
With 39% of voters thinking he should quit according to a new survey, Blair is grappling with the biggest crisis of his career as he continues a trip to East Asia, even facing calls for his resignation from within his own party.
Despite the growing furore over the part played by the government in the apparent suicide of former UN weapons inspector David Kelly, Blair said that he intended to stay in office, and rejected demands to recall parliament from its summer recess.
A poll for the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper found that almost as many voters - 39% - thought he should quit as thought he should stay on - 41%.
Blair had fallen in the estimation of 59% of voters since the affair began, according to the survey, carried out by YouGov.
And 47% felt the government was to blame for the death of Kelly, who bled to death after apparently slashing his wrist.
"Tony Blair and his government's relationship with the British people, once respectful and even affectionate, would seem to have soured, possibly beyond redemption," the Daily Telegraph said.
"In the eyes of many, Mr Blair and the government appear tawdry."
The body of Kelly, a 59-year-old ministry of defence consultant on biological weapons, was found on Friday.
His family said he had been under "intolerable pressure" after being grilled over suspicions that he was the anonymous source of a BBC news report in May - hotly denied by Downing Street - that a key official dossier last September on Iraq had exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
While the government has taken most of the flak for Kelly's death, which has dominated the news in Britain in recent days, the BBC has also come under fire for its role, with questions raised over the accuracy of its reporting.
After insisting for weeks that it needed to protect its sources, the public broadcaster confirmed for the first time Sunday that Kelly was the main source of its story in May.
A BBC statement issued on behalf of its defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan, the author of the report at the centre of the controversy, said: "I want to make it clear that I did not misquote or misrepresent Dr David Kelly."
But the left-wing Daily Mirror daily said the BBC's defence of Gilligan's story and insistance that Kelly was its source meant the corporation was effectively accusing the dead weapons expert of lying.
"Either Dr Kelly lied to MPs when he said he was not the main source or Mr Gilligan exaggerated his own report," the tabloid said.
Kelly's local MP Robert Jackson, a member of the opposition Conservative Party, said BBC chairperson Gavyn Davies should quit and Director General Greg Dyke "should consider his position".
Meanwhile, Clare Short, who resigned as Britain's international development secretary, saying she was misled over Iraq by Blair, said attacks on the BBC were a "distraction from the main questions about how we got to war in Iraq".
Blair was the staunchest ally of United States President George W Bush in the military campaign launched in March, which the two leaders claimed was justified by Saddam Hussein's refusal to give up weapons of mass destruction.
Four months on, both Blair and Bush are suffering political fallout from the fact no convincing proof had been uncovered that Baghdad had such weapons.
- AFX
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