London, Sept 04: British Prime Minister Tony Blair today said he fully intends to stay in office, as an inquiry into the suicide that triggered his worst-ever crisis adjourned for 10 days. In his first Downing Street press conference since the death of David Kelly, Blair refused to field questions about either the late weapons scientist or the judicial inquiry into why he took his life.
"Let the judge do the judging," he said, as Lord Brian Hutton heard from his last batch of witnesses at the royal courts of justice before adjourning until September 15 to ponder the evidence so far.
Blair acknowledged: "It has been a tough time for obvious reasons."
But the Prime Minister flagged his intention to stay in office and forge ahead with a pressing domestic agenda, saying: "I carry on doing the job because I believe in what I'm doing."
Kelly's body was found July 18 in woods near his Oxfordshire home after his employer, the ministry of defense, exposed him as the source of a May 29 BBC report alleging that a September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction had been "sexed up" to bolster the case for war on Saddam Hussein.
In particular, the BBC report suggested that the dossier's most sensation claim -- that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes -- was inserted despite reservations in intelligence circles. Bureau Report