BBC under pressure over Kelly

The BBC was in the dock yesterday after surprise testimony revealed rifts within Britain's public broadcaster over an Iraq weapons expert whose suicide has sparked a crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The unexpected and outspoken testimony from a BBC reporter will put pressure on the world-respected news organisation and could strengthen Mr Blair's hand amid questions over whether the government made an honest case for war in Iraq.

Reporter Susan Watts told an inquiry into Mr David Kelly's death the scientist did not tell her in a telephone call that Blair's top adviser Alastair Campbell transformed a dossier on Iraq's banned weapons to justify a war most Britons opposed.

She also accused BBC bosses of pressuring her to make her report tally with that of her colleague, defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan. The British Broadcasting Corporation's director of news rejected that remark in his evidence to the inquiry.

Mr Kelly slashed his wrist last month after being named as the source for Mr Gilligan's report that a government dossier on Iraq's lethal weapons was "sexed up" by Mr Campbell, Mr Blair's communications chief - playing up a dubious claim that Baghdad could unleash banned weapons at 45 minutes' notice.

The apparent clash of BBC journalists' stories could take some heat off Blair, whose public trust ratings have plunged, as nearly five months after US and British forces invaded Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. A poll this week showed 41 per cent of the public blamed the government for Iraq expert Mr Kelly's death and 68 percent thought the government was dishonest over the Iraq war.

"(Kelly) didn't say the dossier was transformed in the last week and he certainly didn't say that the 45-minute claim was inserted either by Alastair Campbell or by anyone else in government," Watts told senior judge Lord Hutton's inquiry.

Mr Gilligan, whose May 29 report undermined Blair's government, told the inquiry on Tuesday that Mr Kelly did point the finger at Mr Campbell for pushing the key 45-minute claim in comments to him.

Mr Watts insisted there were "significant differences" between Mr Gilligan's reports and hers.

But in extracts from a tape of her interview with the dead scientist - eerily played to the inquiry - Mr Kelly did say that Mr Blair's press office had seized on the 45-minute statement, saying, "it just got out of all proportion".

Watts said she had hired her own lawyer because of pressure imposed by BBC bosses to make her report corroborate Mr Gilligan's.

In an earlier interview, Kelly told Watts that President George W. Bush and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw fudged the crucial difference about Iraq's weapons programmes and the existence of actual missiles, she told the inquiry.

"That was spin," Watts said, quoting Kelly's words. Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of news, denied trying to mould Watts' story to stand up Mr Gilligan's.