The leader of Britain’s main opposition Conservative Party said on Monday that Prime Minister Tony Blair should resign if an inquiry links him to the treatment of a weapons adviser who apparently committed suicide after being caught up in a political row.
Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith described as a ”key issue” the treatment of arms expert David Kelly, who was named by officials as the possible source of a BBC report alleging the government exaggerated the threat from Iraq.
The government denies the claims, which sparked a bitter feud between Blair’s office and the BBC.
”I have been absolutely shocked and horrified over the summer about what has been unfolding over particularly the treatment of Dr Kelly,” Duncan Smith told BBC radio.
”If the prime minister … turns out to have been involved, had knowledge of what was going on with Dr Kelly, I think there is no place for him to go but out.”
Blair has said he did not authorise the Defence Ministry’s decision to confirm that Kelly had come forward as a possible source. But he told the Hutton inquiry last month that he accepted responsibility for decisions by his officials leading to the scientist’s identification. The inquiry adjourned last week and will resume on September 15.
Duncan Smith also said Blair should quit if the inquiry into Kelly’s death, headed by appeals judge Lord Hutton, finds the prime minister misled the country with a September dossier claiming Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes’ notice.
”If he did mislead the country, then I absolutely think it will be a resignation issue,” said Duncan Smith, who added that he backed the decision to go to war in Iraq based on evidence Blair had presented to voters and lawmakers.
Asked whether he believed Blair had misled his countrymen, Duncan Smith said: ”I don’t know, that’s the whole point about the Hutton inquiry, in terms of the charges made against him about the 45 minutes and also other aspects of the original dossier. That is clearly for Lord Hutton to arrive at.”
Kelly’s Defence Ministry bosses named him as a possible source for the BBC report, which cited an unidentified official as saying Blair’s office inserted the 45-minute claim into the September dossier against the wishes of intelligence services, even though it knew the information was probably false. Blair’s office and intelligence officials have rejected the allegation.
After he was named, Kelly came under intense media scrutiny and appeared before two parliamentary committees. A few days after he gave testimony, Kelly’s body was found near his rural home with his left wrist slashed. — Sapa-AP