Aerial view of where police found the body of Kelly

LONDON, July 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The British government of Tony Blair's has been shaken to its foundations by the death of the senior  adviser to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) on biological warfare, David Kelly, with MPs and experts saying that heads should roll over Kelley's death, leading British newspapers wrote Saturday, July 19.

Caught in the lethal crossfire over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) between Downing Street and the BBC, Kelly's body was found Thursday morning, July 17, at Harrowdown Hill, five miles from Kelly's home in Southmoor, Oxfordshire. It was described as a "grisly find", but police did not say how he Kelly died.

"The death of Kelly plunged the British government into a full-scale political crisis. It is the most dramatic event in a long-running political dispute that has seen the government and the BBC trade insults and accusations and threatens to leave both severely damaged," the Financial Times said. 

It said that though No 10 moved quickly to concede a judicial inquiry, chaired by Lord Hutton, into Kelley's death, the latest tragedy arising from the Iraq war looked set to cast an ever-longer shadow over Blair's already troubled cabinet.

"A judicial inquiry into the death of a single person would be unprecedented in Britain," the daily quoted a senior lawyer as saying Friday night, July 18.

Questions will also be asked about how much Blair himself knew about the unmasking of Kelly.

"There are very many questions that will need to be asked over the coming days," said Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

Commenting on the inquiry, anti-Iraq war Labor MP Peter Kilfoyle said: "We owe it to Parliament and to the people, and not least to the family of Dr. Kelly, to get to the bottom of this in a way which is completely untarnished."

His colleague Alice Mahon said: "The whole thing is tragic, it is appalling. There is an ever-more compelling case for a full-scale public inquiry."

The mild-mannered 59-year-old senior U.N. advisor admitted he had met Andrew Gilligan, the defense correspondent of BBC Radio 4's Today program, a week before he broadcast his story on the Radio about the so-called "dodgy Iraq dossier."

On 29 May, Gilligan broadcast that a senior British official had told him that the Government's dossier on Iraq, published in September 2002, was "sexed up" by Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications chief, against the wishes of the intelligence services.

Kelly said he did not think he could have been the source for the story, which became the subject of a bitter row between the Government, the BBC and critics of the Iraq war.

The British leader has seen his support among voters plummet in recent weeks as the government was accused of embellishing its case for waging war on Iraq.

Heads Should Roll

"Little did I realize that Saddam Hussein would dictate the next 10 years of my life," Kelly

The Mirror wrote that Blair's government was in crisis after Kelly's death.

"Blair is facing the toughest test of his tenure," it said, noting that If heads started to roll the pressure on Blair would certainly increase.

In addition to the Prime Minister, others under intense scrutiny are Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as Dr. Kelly worked for both ministries, it said.

"(But) His biggest problem will be Alastair Campbell. If he doesn't go, Mr. Blair risks having his reputation so weakened that his own party could struggle to continue supporting him.

"If Mr. Campbell goes, the Prime Minister would be left without his closest aide. He would also risk being damned by his famously close relationship with his chief spin doctor - a situation that could leave him powerless and friendless within Labor," the leading British paper said.

Last night, Campbell was said by friends to be "considering his position."

The news sent shockwaves around the world to the extent that the Sterling fell half a percent on currency markets as traders assessed the worst crisis of Blair's premiership.

When Kelly's wife, Janice, spoke to a close friend of her husband's, the television journalist and author Tom Mangold, before the body was found she conceded that her husband had been furious at how he had been treated over the last two weeks.

"She said he was very stressed and unhappy about what had happened. This was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in," the Guardian quoted Mangold as saying.

'Diana's Effect'

The respected Daily Telegraph said that Kelly's death is likely to have an effect similar to that of Diana, Princess of Wales.

"Its impact will not be nearly as strong, because Dr. Kelly had only very recently become a public figure, whereas the Princess was so much written and talked about that there were millions all over the world who felt that they knew her personally. But what it means that her death concentrated the nation's mind on everything that had led up to it, in a way that had tangible consequences," the daily said.

"Under this Government, power has been used to bully individuals and to deflect people's minds from the truth. And the great institutions of the state have been pressed into service to protect the public image of the Prime Minister's chief spin doctor," it added, referring to Campbell.

Angry friends said the mild-mannered expert had been left devastated by his treatment at the hands of Labor's spin machine and the MoD.

Sandra Vawdrey, who is married to Kelly's brother-in-law, said: "I think the politicians have a lot of questions to answer."

"We've just been watching Tony Blair on the television news offering his sympathies to the family, but it is a bit late in the day now," she told the Telegraph. 

The manner of his death remained unknown but it is understood investigators quickly ruled out natural causes.

Suggestions that Kelly, a father of three daughters, suffered shotgun injuries or that a rope was found at the scene were discounted by police sources. No suicide note has been found at the scene or at Dr Kelly's home.

The Oxford-educated microbiologist, originally with a background in agricultural science, had been scientific adviser to the MoD's proliferation and arms control secretariat for more than three years.

He had risen through the ranks at the ministry's chemical research centre at Porton Down in Wiltshire to become head of microbiology. He led all inspections of Russian biological warfare facilities and worked as senior adviser on biological warfare in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War and visited that country 37 times during seven years as a weapons inspector.

During a lecture on his role as a senior U.N. adviser on biological warfare he once said: "When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, little did I realize that Saddam Hussein would dictate the next 10 years of my life." Nor did he realize it would dictate the course of his death.