In dock, Blair finds his rating sinking

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s top officials, including his powerful communications Chief Alastair Campbell, will take the stand next week...

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s top officials, including his powerful communications Chief Alastair Campbell, will take the stand next week at an inquiry into the death of a British weapons expert.

The government’s angry denial of BBC claims that Campbell ‘‘sexed up’’ a pre-war dossier on Iraq’s weapons to justify a war most Britons opposed, led to mild-mannered David Kelly being thrust into the limelight. Blair’s trust ratings have plunged as no banned weapons have been found in Iraq. A poll this week showed 68 per cent of the public think the government was dishonest about the war and 41 per cent blamed it for Kelly’s death.

Officials said on Friday that Campbell will take the stand on Tuesday, a day after Blair’s Chief of staff Jonathan Powell and foreign policy guru David Manning give evidence. Blair’s official spokesman Tom Kelly will go before senior judge Lord Hutton on Wednesday.

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Government documents presented to the inquiry this week painted a very different picture, describing Kelly as the leading British expert on all aspects of West Asia chemical and biological proliferation.

During the inquiry’s first week, nobody produced hard evidence to support a BBC reporter’s story that Campbell played up a claim that Saddam Hussein could let loose banned weapons at 45 minutes notice, knowing it was probably wrong.

But Martin Howard, deputy Chief of intelligence at Britain’s Defence Ministry, said two officials were unhappy with language in Blair’s September 2002 dossier and said so in writing. Senior officials at the Ministry of Defence will also be called next week. Most notably, the department’s top civil servant, Sir Kevin Tebbitt, will give evidence on Wednesday. The inquiry has already heard that Tebbitt urged Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to reject a request from Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee for Kelly to appear before them, saying he was not used to being thrown into the public eye. But Hoon overruled him and told Kelly to testify. (Reuters)

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