The announcement came before police formally confirmed that a body found Friday morning was in fact that of David Kelly, 59, indicating the seriousness of the crisis facing the government over its justification for the war.
Kelly, a top biological scientist and WMD expert who had worked for the United Nations, was thrust into the media spotlight earlier this week over allegations that Blair’s office had manipulated intelligence on Iraq’s WMD to back up the case for war.
Police found a body near where the WMD expert, named by the Ministry of Defence as the likely source of a security leak, went missing near his home, saying it “matched the description given of Dr David Kelly” but adding formal identification would only be made Saturday.
The news prompted immediate speculation that parliament would be recalled from its summer recess to deal with the crisis over the credibility of intelligence on the threat of Iraq’s WMD and thus Britain’s justification for going to war.
Blair, in Tokyo after leaving the United States, was being kept informed of developments, his office said. The prime minister was “very distressed” at the death, a spokesman said.
Kelly, 59, underwent questioning Tuesday by the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, which is probing allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office “sexed up” intelligence on Iraq’s WMD in order to justify the war.
He went missing on Thursday afternoon and the body was found Friday morning at Harrowdown Hill, close to Kelly’s home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Last week the Ministry of Defence named Kelly as the likely source for a report by the BBC that Blair’s office had applied pressure to intelligence officers compiling a dossier on Iraq’s WMD.
The public broadcaster, citing a senior unnamed intelligence source, reported May 29 that Blair’s communications director Alastair Campbell insisted a claim that Saddam Hussein could launch WMD within 45 minutes be inserted in the dossier.
The dossier had been published in September and has formed a main pillar of the government’s public case for war.
The BBC’s source indicated the 45-minute claim was uncorroborated and would not normally have been included in the final dossier as it was seen as unreliable.
The claim that intelligence had been exaggerated for public consumption has dogged Blair ever since, especially as no WMD - the sole legal justification for the war in the eyes of many Britons - have been found.
During his evidence to the committee Tuesday, Kelly said that, although he had met the BBC reporter who made the allegation, he did not believe he was the source for the story. One committee member suggested Kelly had been set up as a “fall guy” by the government.
Kelly was clearly uncomfortable and gave evidence in a voice so low the air conditioning had to be turned off for him to be audible.
A highly regarded microbiologist, Kelly has advised British ministers on weapons of mass destruction, visiting Iraq many times under Saddam’s regime.
Kelly became senior adviser on biological warfare for the United Nations in Iraq in 1994, holding the post until 1999.
Between 1991 and 1998 he played a role in inspecting Iraqi weapons after the war in the Gulf, once saying during a lecture: “When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, little did I realise that Saddam Hussein would dictate the next 10 years of my life.”
From 1984 to 1992 he was head of microbiology at the Chemical Defence Establishment in Porton Down in Britain.
He also led all the visits and inspections of Russian biological warfare facilities from 1991 to 1994 under the 1992 Trilateral Agreement between the United States, Britain and Russia.—dpa