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Pressure mounts on Blair to quit

Britain's Queen Elizabeth, right, her husband the Duke of Edinburgh Philip, peering through binoculars, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, second from right, and his wife Cherie, yawning, attend the Braemar Highland Games in the Grampian Highlands of Scotland, Sept. 6. The annual games, traditionally held on the first Saturday of September, were first established in 1832 and include such events as pipe-and-drum competitions, highland dancing, caber-tossing, shot-putting and hammer-throwing. PHOTO: REUTERS

Pressure mounted yesterday for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to quit over his part in the suicide of a weapons expert at the heart of a furious row over the government's case for going to war in Iraq.

A poll in the Mail on Sunday newspaper showed 43 percent of people believed Blair should resign over the affair, 42 percent believed he should stay in office and 15 percent were undecided.

The figures in the YouGov poll, taken the day after the judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly adjourned for 10 days to allow Judge Lord Hutton to decided which witnesses to recall for cross-examination, were the first to show that more voters are against Blair than for him.

The poll will come as a further blow for the once invincible leader of a Labour government with an unassailable parliamentary majority who has seen his personal trust ratings slump since the war to oust Saddam Hussein and who is facing a crescendo of criticism over his policies on education, health and crime.

Kelly, whose name was leaked by the government as the source of a BBC report accusing Blair's office of exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in order to strengthen the case for war, slit his wrists two days after a humiliating public grilling by a parliamentary committee.

His wife testified on Monday to the intense strain Kelly had been under and his sense of betrayal by his government employers.

Her moving testimony came just days after Blair took the stand, taking responsibility for the affair but rejecting the allegations and stating that if the charge of having knowingly mislead the country was proven he should resign.

But it is not only from political opponents that Blair is facing sniping.

Increasingly militant trades unionists -- the former backbone of the Labour Party -- have gone on the offensive, as have some of Blair's own former cabinet ministers.

Former International Development Secretary Clare Short, who quit her post in May because she disapproved of the war in Iraq, wrote in the Independent on Sunday newspaper that Blair should stand by his own words over the Kelly affair.

"The prime minister has told us that the claim that he had knowingly exaggerated the threat from Iraqi chemical and biological weapons would be a resignation issue. It is now clear that the threat was exaggerated," she said.
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