LONDON, July 23: The BBC revealed on Wednesday it had a key tape in which an arms expert, whose apparent suicide sparked a political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair, expresses concern about the way the government presented Iraq weapons intelligence to justify war.

The Guardian newspaper said the public broadcaster believed the tape was a “smoking gun” that would back up a highly controversial BBC report in May, which has provoked a furious row with Blair’s office.

The story suggested that despite the reservations of the intelligence community, Mr Blair’s office “sexed up” the contents of a dossier on Iraq published last September in order to beef up the case for military action against Baghdad.

The tape recording of a conversation between arms expert David Kelly and Susan Watts, science editor of the BBC’s Newsnight current affairs programme, was expected to be submitted to a judicial inquiry into Kelly’s death.

The BBC said it would not discuss the contents of the tape. The state broadcaster is thought to regard it as a useful part of its evidence for the inquiry in support of its controversial story, rather than the centrepiece.

Mr Kelly, a defence ministry consultant, was found with his wrist slashed in a wood in Oxfordshire, west of London last week, days after coming under intense scrutiny as the source for the BBC story.

On June 2 Watts quoted an unnamed source — now revealed as Kelly — who questioned a headline-grabbing claim in the government’s Iraq dossier that Baghdad could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

“It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion,” the source said.—AFP