The defence ministry confirmed that the name of the contact they believed briefed BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan was Dr David Kelly, a government adviser in the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat.

"He is the man who came forward to us. Whether or not he is the source that Gilligan talks about, that is a matter for the BBC to confirm," a defence ministry spokesman said.

The BBC refused to confirm the name.

"The BBC will not be making any comments about, or responding to, any claims concerning the identity of Andrew Gilligan's source for his story on the Today programme of May 29," the BBC statement said.

"We are concerned that day by day information is being deduced that will allow the source to be identified and their safety compromised," the BBC said.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon wrote Wednesday to the chairman of the BBC governors, Gavyn Davies, to ask whether the defence ministry had correctly identified Kelly as the source of Gilligan's story.

Hoon supplied the BBC with the name he had, and invited the corporation to deny it was the source quoted by Gilligan -- pointing out that Kelly was neither a senior intelligence source nor somebody involved in the preparation of the September dossier.

Meanwhile the BBC reported Wednesday that senior British government officials no longer believe that actual physical weapons of mass destruction will be uncovered in Iraq.

"Senior government sources are telling me that they no longer believe that physical weapons of mass destruction are actually going to be found in Iraq," said the BBC's Andrew Marr.

"They don't think that there were no weapons programmes. They believe that interviews with Iraqi scientists, perhaps documentation will be uncovered which will reveal the extent of programmes that were then in the past," Marr said.

"But when it comes to physical evidence I have to say that the belief that that will be found and can be paraded in front of the cameras seems to be trickling into the sand," Marr said.

Downing Street said that Prime Minister Tony Blair was standing by his comments to MPs at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that he is convinced that evidence of Iraq's weapons programmes will be found.

"One theory is that Saddam Hussein did have it, but dismantled his weapons of mass destruction before the war started, perhaps because he had made promises to countries like France and Russia and he hoped that those countries would help him," Marr said.

"The people I am talking to were not cynics, they are not people who made the evidence up or who believed it wasn't there in first place, they are genuinely bemused," he said.

WAR.WIRE