LONDON, Aug 21: Britain’s Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon did not want an arms expert at the centre of claims the government “sexed up” its case for war on Iraq to be quizzed in public about weapons of mass destruction, a probe into the expert’s presumed suicide heard Thursday.

The disclosure came in evidence given by Donald Anderson, chairman of a parliamentary committee that publicly grilled arms expert David Kelly days before his death.

The death of government scientist Kelly in July came after the defence ministry named him as the likely source of a BBC report that alleged Blair’s office embellished intelligence on Iraq’s weapons potential in a government dossier ahead of the US-led war.

The government has denied the allegation while its row with the BBC and Kelly’s mysterious death have left British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is faring badly in opinion polls, facing his gravest crisis since assuming power six years ago.

In a letter to Anderson, Hoon requested that Kelly be questioned “not on the wider issue of Iraq weapons of mass destruction and the preparation of the dossier”, Anderson, a member of parliament for Blair’s Labour party, said on Thursday.

Anderson chaired a joint-party committee that interrogated Kelly on July 15, three days before his body was found with a slit wrist in the countryside near his home west of London.—AFP