British police searching for a missing Ministry of Defence adviser on weapons of mass destruction, named by the government as the possible source for a disputed news report on Iraqi arms, said on Friday they had found a male body.
Thames Valley Police said they have not yet established the identity of the body, found in Oxfordshire, central England, about 8kms from David Kelly’s home. Kelly’s family reported him missing late on Thursday after he failed to return to his home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, from an afternoon walk.
Kelly (59) has acknowledged speaking to a BBC journalist who reported claims that government aides doctored intelligence on Iraqi weapons to strengthen the case for war. The government, which denies the claims, has asked the BBC to say whether Kelly was the unidentified official cited in the story, but the network has refused.
”This is clearly a sensitive inquiry,” acting superintendent David Purnell of Thames Valley Police told a press conference. ”At the moment … a body has been found. There is no more further information as to the identity of that person, those inquiries are ongoing.”
”The family of Dr David Kelly have been aware of what the police have been doing in relation to the search for him,” Purnell said. ”The investigation is still in its early stages.”
Purnell said police were trying to find out whether anyone else was missing from the area.
Kelly left his home at around 3pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday after telling his wife he was going for a walk, officers said, and family called police when he failed to return by 11:45pm (2245 GMT) that night. The body was found at 9:20am (0820 GMT) on Friday, police said.
Officers said Kelly’s family had described the disappearance and failure to make contact with anyone as ”out of character”.
Kelly appeared before a parliamentary committee earlier this week to face questions over the BBC report, which said government aides gave undue prominence, in an intelligence dossier published last September, to a claim that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes’ notice.
Kelly, a former United Nation’s weapons inspector, told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee he had spoken to BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan, but didn’t believe he was the source for the reporter’s story. He denied making the claims included in Gilligan’s report.
”The committee felt pretty confident that he [Kelly] was not in fact the source,” the committee’s chair, Labour Party lawmaker Donald Anderson, told BBC television on Friday.
Anderson said the weapons expert had appeared ”rather relaxed” when he testified to the committee Tuesday and seemed to be ”on top of things”.
Conservative lawmaker Richard Ottaway, also a committee member, said Kelly had suggested he was under great strain.
”At the meeting last week he did hint at the sort of pressure he was under,” Ottaway said. ”He was asked to provide some evidence and he replied that he would do so but he could not get into his house because of the media pressure.”
The BBC report caused a political storm over the handling of weapons intelligence by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office, helping prompt two parliamentary probes into the issue. In the midst of the controversy, Kelly approached bosses at the Ministry of Defence to say he had spoken to Gilligan without authorisation. The ministry later named him as a possible source for the report.
”We are aware that Dr David Kelly has gone missing and we are obviously concerned,” the ministry said Friday.
A spokesperson for Blair’s office also expressed concern for Kelly’s welfare. ”Our thoughts are with his family and friends,” the spokesperson said, briefing reporters on customary condition of anonymity.
The Foreign Affairs Committee has cleared Blair’s communications chief, Alastair Campbell, of allegations he ”sexed up” the September dossier by inserting the 45-minute claim. – Sapa-AP