LONDON, July 27: British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon had spoken with arms expert David Kelly sometime before his apparent suicide, the defence ministry confirmed on Sunday.
“Some time ago, Mr Hoon bumped into Dr Kelly in the staff canteen and they had a chat,” a defence ministry spokesman said.
The spokesman refused to say whether the conversation came before or after the Iraq war or what subjects were discussed.
The Sunday Mirror tabloid, the strongest voice of opposition to the Iraq war in Britain, said Dr Kelly had told Mr Hoon of his concern that their was not enough evidence to justify military action.
Dr Kelly’s corpse was discovered on July 18 in a woods close to London, several days after he was grilled by a parliamentary committee investigating the government’s intelligence claims.
His death has left Prime Minister Tony Blair faced with the worst political crisis of his career and opinion polls plummeting.
The parliamentary probe cleared Campbell of exerting “improper influence” in the drafting of the file.
“The governors decided it was right to broadcast and we were surely justified in reaching this judgment,” he added.
Meanwhile, a friend of Dr Kelly said that the microbiologist had expressed reservations about the presentation of the threat posed by Iraq as early as October 5 last year — just 11 days after the publication of the controversial dossier on September 24.
“He was a scientist and there was factual material in the dossier, and he expressed a frustration about how that factual material was being interpreted for various policy ends,” said Roger Kingdon.
“It wasn’t clear whether he meant how it was interpreted by the government or how it was interpreted by the media,” Kingdon said.
Opposition Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said Labour was “in the dock” over its reliance on spin, which he suggested had led to the Kelly tragedy.—APP/AFP
