UK: Mr Tony Blair is resisting calls to extend the inquiry into the death of a government scientist, Dr David Kelly, to cover the wider question of his government's use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.
The judge appointed to conduct the judicial inquiry, Lord Hutton, signalled a robust approach yesterday, asserting it would be for him "to decide as I think right within my terms of reference the matters which will be the subject of my investigation."
Lord Hutton also confirmed his intention to carry out his investigation "with expedition", to report as soon as possible and to conduct most of it in public.
His comments sent a chill through Whitehall and the BBC as both sides prepared to answer hard questions about their role in the row over the BBC allegation that Downing Street "sexed up" a government dossier on Iraq's weapons capacity which preceded Dr Kelly's presumed suicide last Friday.
Just three days before his death Dr Kelly persuaded the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee he could not have been the primary source for the BBC claim, first broadcast on Radio Four's Today programme on May 29th.
However, in a statement on Sunday the BBC confirmed that the Ministry of Defence adviser had been its source and maintained it had correctly interpreted and reported information received from him.
That presented the BBC with an immediate dilemma, since the obvious implication was that the sole uncorroborated source on which it had relied had misled the Select Committee. And BBC chiefs were maintaining a low profile yesterday as pressure mounted on them to explain why they had represented their source - now known to be Dr Kelly, a microbiologist and former weapons inspector - as "a senior and credible source in the intelligence services".
At the same time the Defence Secretary, Mr Geoff Hoon, remained in the firing line amid unanswered questions which the inquiry will address as to the procedures followed by the MoD after Dr Kelly admitted having unauthorised contact with the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, and the part played by the MoD, and possibly No 10, in leaking Dr Kelly's identity to the press as part of their campaign to force the BBC to retract its allegations.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Mr Charles Kennedy, and the former leader of the Commons, Mr Robin Cook, took Lord Hutton's comments yesterday to mean that the law lord was prepared to extend his remit beyond "the more narrowly drawn circumstances" leading to Dr Kelly's death.
Warning that senior figures in the government and Whitehall and at the BBC might have to "consider their positions" in the light of Lord Hutton's conclusions, Mr Kennedy said "all hell would break loose" if the government sought to obstruct any particular line of inquiry.
Suggesting this was "bound to go more widely than would be comfortable for the government" Mr Kennedy told Sky News: "Woe betide any government minister or any civil servant who tries to put roadblocks in his way."
Speaking on the BBC's World at One programme, Mr Cook welcomed the law lord's statement as "dignified and robust" and suggested it would be difficult to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to Dr Kelly's death without probing "some of the prior issues about which he was talking to Mr Gilligan."
Mr Cook said: "After all, that conversation appears to have started a chain of events with fatal and tragic consequences." He continued: "It is impossible surely to consider that conversation without considering the content in which Dr Kelly appears, and he did again with the select committee, to have expressed some doubt about the claims of the September dossier."
However, the former Labour minister, Ms Glenda Jackson, who has called for Mr Blair's resignation, said it appeared from Lord Hutton's statement that his inquiry would not go far enough and that he would keep within his terms of reference as defined by the government.
Rejecting calls to widen the scope of the inquiry, Mr Blair said: "I think it is important that he [Lord Hutton] does the job that we have asked him to do."
The Conservative shadow home secretary, Mr Oliver Letwin, said it was regrettable that the Prime Minister had limited the inquiry's scope and said his party would have preferred to see the inquiry put on a statutory basis.