Kelly 'predicted own death'

Weapons expert David Kelly predicted his own death five months before it happened, telling a colleague: "I will probably be found dead in the woods."

Sensational evidence to the Hutton Inquiry today revealed Dr Kelly had deep misgivings about the invasion of Iraq.

He feared that if it went ahead it would take the lives of senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime whom he had personally urged to co-operate with United Nations weapons inspectors. He had promised them that if they did so, they would be spared military action.

Senior diplomat David Broucher said Dr Kelly told him in February this year that "if the invasion went ahead that would make him a liar and he would have betrayed his contacts, some of whom might be killed as a direct result of his actions". When he asked Dr Kelly what the consequences for him would be, the scientist replied: "I will probably be found dead in the woods."

It was on 18 July that Dr Kelly's body was discovered on Harrowdown Hill near his Oxfordshire home, apparently having committed suicide.

Mr Broucher, a former ambassador in Prague, is now Britain's permanent representative at the Geneva conference on disarmament. Appearing before the inquiry at short notice, he said he had held a meeting with Dr Kelly on 27 February to discuss the biological weapons convention, a conversation which moved on to look at Iraq's own biological weapons threat. Mr Broucher said he told the weapons expert he could not understand why the Iraqis were "courting disaster" by refusing to play ball with the weapons inspectors.

Mr Broucher went on: "He said he had personally urged senior Iraqis. Their response was that if they revealed too much about their state of readiness this might increase the risk that they would be attacked.

"He tried to reassure them that if they co-operated with the inspectors they had nothing to fear.

"He felt he was in some personal difficulty or embarrassment over this because he believed the invasion might go ahead anyway, and somehow this put him in a morally ambiguous position.

"I drew the inference he might be thought to have lied to some of his contacts in Iraq.

"As Dr Kelly was leaving, I said to him 'What will happen if Iraq is invaded?' His reply was - which I took at the time to be a throwaway remark - he said, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods'."

Mr Broucher said he thought nothing more of the conversation until 17 July when he saw pictures of Dr Kelly on TV news and recognised him. "It was not until later I became aware of the circumstances of his death and realised the significance of this remark," he said.

Soon afterwards Mr Broucher emailed a senior Foreign Office official, Patrick Lamb, to report the incident and to come forward to inform the Hutton investigation into Dr Kelly's death.

Mr Broucher said that at one point after the original conversation it crossed his mind that Dr Kelly might have meant the Iraqis would kill him. He revealed that Dr Kelly also voiced doubts over the Government dossier on Iraqi weaponry.

"He said there had been a lot of pressure to make the dossier as robust as possible, that every judgment had been closely fought over. He threw doubt on the readiness of Iraq's bio weapons, the fact that they could not use them quickly, and that was relevant to the point about 45 minutes."

The diplomat said he had recalled details of the conversation from "a deep memory hole" but that he was sure about the phrase Dr Kelly had used to predict his own fate.

Tony Blair learned today that he is to appear before the inquiry next Thursday - as the Government's handling of the affair came under new fire. Dr Kelly told a journalist he had been "put through the wringer" by his Ministry of Defence bosses.

And Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon was accused of attempting to muzzle the scientist when he appeared before the Commons foreign affairs committee. Mr Hoon will appear before the inquiry on Wednesday.

Mr Blair is only the second Prime Minister to be summoned to give evidence at a judicial investigation. The other was John Major, at the Scott Inquiry on arms to Iraq in 1994.

Mr Blair will face close questioning over his personal involvement in Dr Kelly's case, set against Downing Street's insistence that the affair was handled by the MoD.

The more immediate problem for the Government today was the news that Dr Kelly felt he had been mistreated by the MoD and left to face the glare of publicity without proper support.

Evidence emerged in an account of a meeting between the weapons scientist and Sunday Times journalist Nick Rufford. The encounter, at Dr Kelly's Oxfordshire home, took place on 8 July, the day before his name was published to the world as the alleged "mole" for the BBC.

Mr Rufford, who said the two men knew each other well, said Dr Kelly looked "pale and tired". The scientist told him he had just received a phone call from the MoD press office telling him he would be named the next day. He said he was "a bit shocked" because he had been told the matter would be confidential.

Mr Rufford asked whether the MoD had offered Dr Kelly somewhere to stay or any advice or support. Dr Kelly said they had not. Mr Rufford went on: "I said he was likely to be besieged at his home. He looked perplexed at the prospect."

He asked Dr Kelly what he thought of the way his meeting with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan was reported. Mr Rufford went on: "He said, 'I talked to him about factual stuff, the rest is bullshit."

Gilligan sought to influence the Commons inquiry in which he was a key player, foreign affairs committee chairman Donald Anderson said. The journalist emailed Lib-Dem MP David Chidgey, a member of the committee, with a list of suggested questions to put to Dr Kelly.