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Kelly wasn't depressed, probe panel told

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON AUG. 11. The mystery surrounding the death of the controversial British weapons expert on Iraq, David Kelly, deepened after the inquiry commission looking into it was told on Monday that just days before his apparent suicide on July 17, he seemed to be in a "normal state of mind".

This is contrary to the widely held impression that Kelly had been depressed ever since he was publicly identified as the source for the BBC's contentious report on alleged abuse of intelligence by the Government in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Terence Taylor, head of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Washington and a colleague of Kelly on the U.N. weapons inspection team in the nineties, told the inquiry that he spoke to Kelly four days before his death and even discussed plans to meet him the following weekend.

"I spoke to him by telephone from the U.S. because I was coming to the U.K. and I was discussing plans in order to meet him the following weekend - 20th July,'' Mr. Taylor told the inquiry on the first day of its public hearings.

He said he had known Kelly for 16 years and had stayed with him just three or four weeks before his death.

"He was speaking about his daughter's forthcoming wedding... He seemed to me to be in a very normal state of mind,'' Mr Taylor said, adding that though he did express some "negative thoughts'' about some of his colleagues.

Mr Taylor knocked down official attempts to portray Kelly as a marginal figure and a "Walter Mitty'' figure who exaggerated his own importance. He said Kelly was an internationally recognised weapons expert and it was because of his "remarkably successful'' inspection work in Iraq that the Saddam Hussein regime was forced to admit that it had a biological weapons programme.

Mr Taylor's testimony was seen as bad news for the Government, which in recent days has tried to suggest that Kelly was a "middle-ranking'' official whose position and views were hyped by the BBC.

Kelly's importance was also acknowledged by a senior Ministry of Defence official, who appeared before the inquiry. Richard Hatfield, personnel director of MoD, said Kelly was the "U.K. expert'' on Iraqi weapons and that he did help in the preparation of the intelligence dossier on Iraq published by the Blair Government in September 2002.

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