London, July 27: As British Prime Minister Tony Blair headed for Barbados for a family holiday, the row between the BBC and his government escalated dramatically today with the news organisation's chairman Gavyn Davies accusing cabinet ministers of seeking to destroy its independence in revenge for its refusal to back down in the Iraq dossier controversy. "We are chastised for taking a different view on editorial matters from that of the government and its supporters. Because we have had the temerity to do this, it is hinted that a system that has protected the BBC for 80 years should be swept away and replaced by an external regulator that will 'bring the BBC to heel'," Davies wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.
The BBC chairman's remarks underline the level of animosity between the corporation and Tony Blair's senior cabinet allies, the newspaper commented.
The BBC, it said, had informally agreed not to continue the feud until after Lord Hutton delivers his judicial inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, the government scientist who was the source of BBC's story that intelligence about Iraq's pile of weapons of mass destruction were "sexed up."
But BBC felt provoked by last weekend's claim by the former minister Peter Mandelson that it was to blame for Kelly's death and by subsequent hints from Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, that the corporation's governors were not fulfilling their statutory obligations. Bureau Report