LONDON, Aug 17: Britain’s Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has told colleagues he accepts he must “carry the can” for the death of a government scientist at the centre of claims that London exaggerated the case for war on Baghdad, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

According to the paper, Mr Hoon telephoned colleagues to tell them he expected to have to “fall on his sword” over the affair, which has triggered a major political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Last week, a judicial inquiry into the suspected suicide of weapons expert David Kelly heard that Hoon had overruled his most senior civil servant’s request that the scientist be spared a public grilling by a parliamentary committee.

Mr Hoon has informed friends that he believes the disclosure, and allegations that he was prepared to put political expediency ahead of Kelly’s welfare, spell doom for his career as a member of Blair’s cabinet of senior ministers, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

“He’s told us he’s going to carry the can,” one close colleague told the right-wing weekly.

Some of the most senior officials of Blair’s office, including media chief Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, the prime minister’s chief of staff, are preparing to give evidence to the judicial probe in London this week.

Mr Blair is due to be summoned to testify at some stage, along with Hoon himself.

The body of Mr Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, was found on July 18 at a beauty spot near his home at Southmoor, west of London, days after he was grilled by two parliamentary committees — an ordeal he apparently found hard to endure.

The committees were investigating disputed claims by the BBC that London exaggerated an official dossier published last September on Baghdad’s weapons arsenal to bolster the case for the war on Iraq launched in March.

The Mail on Sunday tabloid reported that Kelly had been warned by a senior defence ministry official a year before his death that his career would suffer if he refused to “sex up” the government dossier on Iraq.

The paper quoted “unofficial defence sources” as saying: “Downing Street wanted something in the dossier that would not normally be released in order to provide impact.”

But Kelly refused to cooperate, the Mail on Sunday said.

In a controversial story that sparked a political furore, BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan said on May 29 that a senior British official, later identified as Kelly, had told him the government’s September dossier was “sexed up” against the wishes of the intelligence services.

Gilligan also used a newspaper article in June to report that Campbell was responsible for inserting into the file the headline-grabbing claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.—AFP