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Arms expert Kelly was not misquoted in Iraq row: BBC
London, July 21: The British arms expert who apparently committed suicide after a row over the way intelligence was used to launch the Iraq war was correctly quoted by the BBC, the journalist who interviewed him said today.
London, July 21: The British arms expert who apparently committed suicide after a row over the way intelligence was used to launch the Iraq war was correctly quoted by the BBC, the journalist who interviewed him said today.
David Kelly was found dead on Friday, following a grilling earlier in the week from a parliamentary committee examining whether or not the government "sexed up" its case for war.
"I want to make it clear that I did not misquote or misrepresent Dr David Kelly," said a BBC statement issued on behalf of the BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan.
Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector, was the anonymous source of a May 29 BBC News report -- hotly denied by Prime Minister Tony Blair's office-- that a key dossier last September on Iraq had exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
"Entirely separately from my meeting with him, Dr Kelly expressed very similar concerns about downing street interpretation of intelligence in the dossier and the unreliability of the 45-minute point to Newsnight," the statement said.
In a newspaper article on June 1, Gilligan claimed that Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, was responsible for inserting in the dossier the claim that it could only take Saddam 45 minutes to launch his weapons of mass destruction.
"These reports have never been questioned by Downing Street," Gilligan's statement said today.
Bureau Report
"I want to make it clear that I did not misquote or misrepresent Dr David Kelly," said a BBC statement issued on behalf of the BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan.
Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector, was the anonymous source of a May 29 BBC News report -- hotly denied by Prime Minister Tony Blair's office-- that a key dossier last September on Iraq had exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
"Entirely separately from my meeting with him, Dr Kelly expressed very similar concerns about downing street interpretation of intelligence in the dossier and the unreliability of the 45-minute point to Newsnight," the statement said.
In a newspaper article on June 1, Gilligan claimed that Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, was responsible for inserting in the dossier the claim that it could only take Saddam 45 minutes to launch his weapons of mass destruction.
"These reports have never been questioned by Downing Street," Gilligan's statement said today.
Bureau Report