LONDON, August 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to give evidence at the inquiry over the death of Iraq arms expert David Kelly, other governments are facing tough times over their support to the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.

Blair will testify to a judicial inquiry into the apparent suicide of Kelly on Thursday, August 28, an appearance which could potentially make or break his government.

With polls saying two-thirds of Britons believe he misled the country over the reasons for invading Iraq, a mass of official documents newly released by the inquiry have placed Blair’s role in the affair under increased scrutiny, Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Among 9,000 pages published late Saturday, August 23, were notes of government meetings suggesting the Prime Minister was intimately involved in deciding whether Kelly should be named as the source of a controversial BBC report into the case for war.

“There has been plenty of testimony about meetings, some including the Prime Minister himself, devoted to the persistent, worried search for evidence to harden up the case for invading Iraq, speculation about how the media would react to the 45-minute claim ("Alastair, what will be the headline in the Standard on the day of publication?" Campbell was asked), and finally the persistent, worried search for the one who had leaked and what he would say next,” according to the Times

Also deeply embarrassing for Blair is a letter showing the anger of Kelly’s family after government officials, according to the family, smeared the dead scientist's reputation following his death.

The probe into Kelly’s death, led by senior judge Brian Hutton, will hear from Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon Wednesday, August 27, the day before Blair is called to the witness box at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.

Among the new documents - many of which would have normally been kept under wraps for 30 years - were notes of meetings Blair had had with key officials over whether Kelly should be named.

A memo from top intelligence official John Scarlett contains details of a series of discussions with Blair and others about the issue.

"Agreement that the issue would eventually become public," reads a note from July 8, ending: "Not much time left."

Also released was an angry letter from Kelly’s widow and daughters demanding to know why government officials had likened Kelly to fictional fantasist Walter Mitty, a slur for which Blair's spokesman apologized last month.

"If information of this nature is being disseminated, either formally or informally, I should like to know on whose authority this is being done," the family's solicitor said.

The Hutton inquiry has already sat for two weeks, hearing a mass of sometimes impenetrable and often contradictory evidence.

However, according to a poll released Sunday, the claim at the very center of the controversy - that Blair exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq - is proving difficult for him to shake off.

An ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper found 67 percent of respondents felt they had been deceived by Blair over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

A third said the prime minister should quit.

Blair staked a huge amount of his credibility in persuading a skeptical public that Britain must support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and his government has bitterly rejected the BBC's allegations of dishonesty.

A senior figure in the main opposition Conservative Party, which backed the Iraq invasion, said Sunday that the real issue was not the actions of individuals.

"It is about the system of government that the prime minister has installed in this country and whether that is a satisfactory and reliable system," defense spokesman Bernard Jenkin told Sky News.

The opinion of some newspapers was that while neither the BBC or the government had proved their case, Blair still had a lot of explaining to do.

The Independent Sunday stressed that although Blair might not be personally at fault, he must "take responsibility for the behavior of his own people".

“Even for a politician as skilled at answering, or perhaps more accurately avoiding answering, awkward questions as Tony Blair, this coming week is likely to be a difficult one," it predicted.

In the meanwhile, other countries which stood behind the United States in the Iraqi invasion are also now treading in a political minefield.

In Canberra, a former intelligence official accused the Australian government, another staunch support of the invasion, of misleading the public by "dishonesty" over the accuracy of intelligence reports.

David Wilkie, an ex-intelligence officer who resigned over the invasion, said Prime Minister John Howard's office "sexed up" the intelligence reports that were offered to justify the offensive.

"Sometimes the exaggeration was so great, it was clear dishonesty," Wilkie told a parliamentary inquiry.
He said information was going from the intelligence agency to Howard's office "and the exaggeration was occurring in there, or the dishonesty was occurring somewhere in there."

Howard told Wilkie to "stop slandering decent people."

Spain, another supporter to the invasion had "nothing to hide," according to Defense Minister Federico Trillo.

Danish left-wing parties have called for an investigation into the government's use of allegedly misleading intelligence, but Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has brushed aside the demand as "academic".

The Dutch parliament has asked Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to clarify how the government reached its decision to support the United States, and the government is preparing a reply.

In Portugal where, like Spain, the government supported the United States without sending troops, Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso never produced intelligence reports to justify his position. He simply argued the need to support its ally, the United States, against a despotic regime.

But as his closest ally in the Iraq invasion faces what could be one of the most important days of his premiership, Bush is not under no pressure from the Congress.

The Congress has not acted on allegations that Bush included a false report about a supposed uranium-acquisition program by Iraq in his State of the Union address in January.

But the intelligence and armed forces committees in Congress did hold closed hearings on the intelligence lapses and whether Bush was given good information on Iraq's weapons.

The Republican majority in Congress has refused to establish a special commission to investigate the allegations that the administration manipulated intelligence reports to justify the invasion.

According to Joe Lieberman, a Democratic candidate for president, Bush broke "a basic bond of truth" with the American people by inserting false and misleading information.