02 February 2004	Monday	10 Zilhaj 1424

LONDON, Feb 1: A bitter row between the British government and the BBC exploded back into life on Sunday as the BBC's outgoing head accused the government of trying regularly to "intimidate" the state-funded broadcaster.

Throughout the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair's then-information chief Alastair Campbell would fire off written "rants" complaining about the BBC's news coverage, former director general Greg Dyke said.

"What Alastair Campbell was clearly trying to do was intimidate the BBC so that we reported what he wanted us to report as opposed to what we wanted to report," an angry Dyke said in an interview on BBC television.

Dyke resigned on Thursday following the publication of an official report into the suicide of government weapons expert David Kelly, which criticised the BBC while almost totally exonerating the government.

Kelly had killed himself in July after being identified as the source of a hugely controversial BBC radio report two months earlier alleging Blair's government exaggerated the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

That sparked a furious row after Campbell demanded that the independently-managed corporation retract the charge.

An inquiry into Kelly's death led by judge Lord Brian Hutton and published on Wednesday pronounced the allegations "unfounded", prompting both Dyke and the BBC's chairman, Gavyn Davies, to step down.

However in a bitter riposte on Sunday, Dyke complained that Hutton had failed to take into account the sheer volume of complaints the BBC received from Campbell, who resigned as Blair's chief spin doctor for personal reasons last year.

"We were inundated with complaints from Alastair Campbell," Dyke said. "This was a man who wrote to us an awful lot."

Earlier Sunday Dyke had published a personal letter he sent to Blair last year pointing out that Downing Street had often complained about stories which were subsequently found to be accurate.

"On many occasions in my time as director general, the Downing Street press office under Mr. Campbell denied stories that later turned out to be true," said Dyke's letter, dated March 21 and published in the Sunday Times.

"I can list half a dozen," Dyke wrote. This meant it was difficult to know when complaints from Campbell should be taken seriously. "There was never a certainty that a denial from the government director of information meant the story wasn't true," the letter said.

"It often meant the Downing Street press office simply didn't want it reported." Blair's government has repeatedly stressed it considers the dispute closed following the departures of Dyke and Davies and a formal apology from the BBC.

However a series of newspaper opinion polls have shown that many members of the public consider Hutton's findings one-sided, and that they trust the BBC far more than Blair and his ministers.

Speaking on Sunday, Dyke revealed that such was the sense of crisis following the report's publication that the entire BBC board of governors considered stepping down.

"(The governors) discussed whether they should all go. I urged them not to all go, you can't have a BBC with nobody there," he said. He also stressed the urgent need for the BBC to retain its independence in the face of official pressure. -AFP