Blair ally blasts BBC for Kelly's death

Writing in The Observer as Blair faced the worst crisis in his political career, Mandelson hit out at the British Broadcasting Corporation's "obsession" with attacking Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell.

"It was the BBC's obsession with him (Campbell) that led more than anything else to the breakdown in relations between the Government and Britain's principal public service broadcaster, with the result we have seen," Mandelson said.

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Kelly, 59, had been fingered as the unnamed intelligence official who had told BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan in May that Downing Street had "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction in order to beef up the case for joining the United States in war against Saddam Hussein.

But, before a parliamentary committee last Tuesday, Kelly -- an expert in biological weapons in the Ministry of Defence in London -- denied he was the main source of the story.

Two days later he disappeared from his home. The next day, Friday, as Blair was en route to Tokyo from Washington where he was greeted as a hero by US senators and congressmen, Kelly was found dead in woods near his home in Oxfordshire.

Police on Saturday revealed that Kelly had apparently slashed one of his wrists.

Kelly's mourning family said he was under "intolerable pressure" in the weeks before and days after his tough grilling Tuesday before the House of Commons' foreign affairs committee.

Gilligan's report gave rise to a bitter war of words between Downing Street and the BBC, with each side accusing the other of lying.

While admitting that "Campbell is no angel and is capable of making his own mistakes," Mandelson said the BBC "should have acknowledged the truth" that its information was false rather than choosing "to turn a resolvable disagreement into a pitched battle about its honour and independence as broadcasters, irrespective of its confidence in the story."