Suicide theory stronger, Blair pleads restraint

British PM Tony Blair’s government was shaken to the core by the death of a scientist ensnared in a vitriolic row between BBC and the L...

British PM Tony Blair’s government was shaken to the core by the death of a scientist ensnared in a vitriolic row between BBC and the Labour administration over the Iraq war.

As British media tore into the government’s handling of the affair, Blair called on Saturday for an end to speculation over the tragedy of David Kelly, suspected as the ‘‘mole’’ behind a BBC report alleging that Blair’s communications chief Alastair Campbell ‘‘sexed up’’ a dossier on Iraq.

Meanwhile, the police confirmed on Saturday that David Kelly had apparently killed himself by slashing his left wrist. Police said they had found a knife and some pain-killers near Kelly’s body, which was found near a rural wood a day earlier.

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‘‘The cause of death was hemorrhaging from a wound to his left wrist. The injury is consistent with having been caused by a bladed object,’’ said Acting Superintendent David Purnell of Thames Valley police.

‘‘We’ve recovered a knife and an open packet of coproxamol tablets at the scene,’’ he said. ‘‘Whilst our inquiries are continuing, there is no indication of any other party being involved.’’ Purnell described the tablets as a painkiller, but would not give any details about the blade.

Blair, facing what is shaping up to be the biggest crisis of his six years in power, looked tired and haggard as he called on politicians and the media to ‘‘show some respect and restraint.’’ But his sombre appeal, made in Tokyo at the start of a Far East tour, fell on deaf ears back at home where the media ripped into a government accused of being so obsessed with public relations gloss that a man lost his life.

‘‘Spun to Death,’’ read the headline in the left-leaning tabloid Daily Mirror, while the Independent said Kelly had been ‘‘A Casualty of War.’’

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The conservative Daily Mail pulled no punches, pointing the finger of blame at Blair’s Downing Street team in London. ‘‘Yesterday a decent, shy civil servant who had been savagely chewed up and spat out by a malign, amoral Downing Street machine met a tormented and tragic end,’’ it said.

Blair, lambasted at home for the way he led the country to war over Iraq, stepped on the flight to Tokyo buoyed by a rapturous reception from politicians and media in Washington. But everything had changed by the time he emerged grim-faced from the plane in Tokyo. The timing could not have been more disastrous, as the Mirror put it: ‘‘As Tony Blair lapped up 18 standing ovations in the US Congress, one of his leading WMD experts was taking his own life in an Oxfordshire wood.’’ (Reuters)