NAME: Dr David Kelly

AGE: The count is off

NATIONALITY: British

CLAIM TO FAME: Preferred death over telling a lie

WHAT should have been a proud achievement for British Prime Minister Tony Blair is fast turning into the most unimaginable farce.

The latest in the series of incidents that have all but blackened Britain’s case of invading Iraq has been the tragic death of Dr David Kelly. A former UN weapons inspector, the apparent suicide of the mild-mannered Kelly has not only rocked the British establishment, but even become a factor of concern for the British economy.

Things started to go bad for the Blair government, and subsequently for Dr Kelly, when the invading American and British forces failed to find any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The British Broadcasting Corporation, in one of its investigative reports, alleged that the WMDs were only a piece of fiction and that both the governments across the Atlantic had lied about them so that a case for invading Iraq could be established. One of the unnamed sources for the BBC report was Dr David Kelly. And though he denied in front of a parliamentary committee as to ever having told anything, the finger of suspicion always seemed to follow him.

Subsequently, the Oxford-educated microbiologist’s life was put under a lot of unnecessary pressure that forced him to take his life. Dr Kelly was the chief science officer at Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Virology. At the Ministry of Defence, he rose through the ranks to become head of microbiology from 1984 to 1992, and was a senior adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat in the Ministry of Defence for more than three years. He was also one of the world’s foremost authorities on Iraq’s former biological weapons programme.

As a chief UN inspector, he led the first bio-weapons team into Iraq in 1991, and was instrumental in uncovering Iraq’s secret biological programmes. He lead the search for most of the 1990s. His colleagues spoke highly of his professionalism. It was probably the fear of losing that professional integrity that forced Kelly to take his life.

Kelly’s death and the failiure of the Allied forces to find any WMDs have put Tony Blair’s political career on the line. The victory in Iraq should have been the feather in his political career. But being America’s loyal servant has had more repercussions than the British premier can possibly handle. Maybe, President Pervez Musharraf should take note!