A rchive Date
[ 20-07-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Britain ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/07/19/140515-ap.html
Weapons adviser killed himself
By BETH GARDINER
Sat, July 19, 2003
SOUTHMOOR, England (AP) - David Kelly was a respected family man who rode horses and played cribbage on the pub team in his quiet, Oxfordshire village, a world away from his high-stakes work as a top Iraq weapons expert.
That larger world led the 59-year-old scientist into stressful, unpleasant circumstances, caught in the middle of a no-holds-barred battle between the media and the government over the honesty of Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for war.
Two days after he testified before Parliament, Kelly committed suicide, slitting his wrist, authorities said Saturday. His death has shaken Britain's government and raised questions about whether Blair has "blood on his hands."
In Southmoor - a hamlet little more than a bend in the road, with a Methodist church, hairdresser, newsstand, convenience store and pub - family and friends remembered Kelly for his integrity. Some complained a decent man had been exploited by ruthless politicians trying to duck a scandal.
"Events over recent weeks have made David's life intolerable, and all of those involved should reflect long and hard on this fact," the Kelly family said in a statement Saturday. "A loving private and dignified man has been taken from us all."
Steven Ward, landlord of the Hinds Head pub, said "He's been made a fall guy."
"David's too straight. David wouldn't lie about anything," Ward said. "This is Blair and his cronies trying to find someone to get them out."
Kelly, a Defence Ministry expert and former UN weapons inspector, had spoken off the record with a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter about intelligence on Iraqi weapons. He was investigated as the possible source of BBC claims that Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, had hyped weapons intelligence to help justify going to war.
The BBC reporter said Campbell insisted that a dossier on Iraq, published by the government in September, included a claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes - even though intelligence experts doubted it.
Blair's government and the BBC lashed out at each other for weeks with claim and counterclaim, demands for an apology and refusals. Neither side seemed prepared to give any ground in a fight over credibility.
Through it all, Kelly denied being the source, and it remains unclear if he was. His wife, Janice, reportedly said he was "very angry" at being dragged into a public controversy.
Thursday afternoon, Kelly - a soft-spoken, bearded man with eyeglasses and grey hair - left his house in Southmoor, a village 30 kilometres southeast of Oxford.
He told his wife he was taking a walk. A local farmer said Kelly smiled as he passed.
At the time, Blair was flying across the Atlantic to Washington where, as the United States' closest ally in the Iraq war, the prime minister addressed both houses of Congress to tumultuous applause.
Thursday night, Janice Kelly notified police that her husband had not returned. His body was found Friday morning at the edge of a forest not far from his home. His left wrist was slashed, Southmoor police said. A knife and packet of painkillers lay nearby.
By then, Blair's plane was approaching Tokyo, the first stop on a six-day Asian tour. Clearly stricken, the prime minister announced an independent inquiry into Kelly's death.
News of the suicide has overshadowed Blair's trip, increasing pressure on the prime minister over the failure of the United States or Britain to find weapons of mass destruction - the heart of his case for military action
At a news conference Saturday in Japan, Blair stood stony-faced and speechless when a journalist asked: "Have you got blood on your hands, prime minister? Are you going to resign over this?"
An Oxford-educated microbiologist, Kelly had been chief science officer at Britain's Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Virology.
At the Ministry Defence, he rose through the ranks to become head of microbiology from 1984 to 1992 and was senior adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat in the Ministry of Defence for more than three years.
Kelly also was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Iraq's former biological weapons program.
As a chief UN inspector, he led the first bioweapons team into Iraq in 1991 and was instrumental in uncovering Iraq's secret biological programs. He lead the search for most of the 1990s.
When the inspection regime was reconfigured in 1999, Kelly provided the United Nations with an assessment of Iraq's biological weapons that formed the basis of what both the United Nations and the United States have cited as the key unanswered questions on Iraq's programs.
"Dr. Kelly was known for his professionalism and had the respect of his colleagues," the UN inspection team said in a statement Saturday in New York.
Kelly's friends within the United Nations and the international arms control community said in recent weeks that because of the allegations surrounding the BBC report, he had feared for his new post as an adviser with a U.S. Pentagon-led weapons search team in Iraq. He had been in Baghdad in June to prepare for the job.
Southmoor neighbours knew little of Kelly's role in that international scene. Instead, they spoke of his "lovely family" with his wife - eldest daughter, Sian, 32, and twins Rachel and Ellen, 30.
"He never discussed his work, he was a straightforward family man," said Ann Lewis, a longtime resident. "He used to ride horses around the village. He was always a smart, tidy man."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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