Police confirmed on Saturday that a body discovered near his home close to Oxford, west of London, was that of Kelly, and revealed the grey-bearded 59-year-old had died after apparently slashing his wrist.

It brings a bitterly tragic twist to the increasingly confusing tale of whether the British government misled the country over its reasons for going to war with Iraq.

Kelly's unwelcome fame began on July 9 when the former United Nations weapons inspector, who subsequently advised British ministers on weapons of mass destruction, was named by the government as the possible source of a highly contentious BBC report on Iraq.

The broadcaster and the Labour Party government have been at war for weeks over the story, which quoted an anonymous source involved in compiling official pre-war dossiers on Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction as saying the government deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

On Tuesday Kelly, a microbiologist who has been a scientific adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat for more than three years, was obliged to give evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating the matter.

Kelly insisted he was not the source of the story but faced intense and often hostile questioning from members of parliament.

Though clearly very uncomfortable, the slightly-built scientist answered questions quietly and calmly and did not appear to be in great distress.

But a close friend of Kelly said on Friday the scientist's wife had seen he was under massive strain.

"She told me he had been under considerable stress, that he was very, very angry about what had happened at the committee, that he wasn't well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn't liked that, he wanted to come home," television journalist Tom Mangold told ITV News.

Mangold described Kelly as "a man whose brain could boil water" and who "used words with tremendous precision".

"If he is dead -- and I hope he is not -- he is a tremendous loss to the good guys who were working in Iraq," Mangold said.

The former head of the UN weapons inspection programme in Iraq, Rolf Ekeus, said Kelly deserved a Nobel peace prize for his work on disarmament.

He told France's Le Monde newspaper that Kelly "was a remarkable scientist, of a very high level. He was not political. The political aspect of disarmament did not interest him."

From 1984 to 1992, Kelly was chief science officer at Britain's Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Virology and the head of microbiology at the Chemical Defence Establishment.

An expert in arms issues, he became senior adviser on biological warfare for the United Nations in Iraq in 1994, holding the post until 1999.

He played a major role in inspecting Iraqi weapons facilities after the 1991 Gulf War, also inspecting biological warfare facilities in Russia.

"When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, little did I realise that Saddam Hussein would dictate the next 10 years of my life," Kelly said later.

Although his job as a government adviser involved occasionally briefing journalists, Kelly was not a media expert and appeared totally unprepared for the furore surrounding his exposure.

Garth Whitty, who worked with Kelly as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, described him as an "internationally regarded" expert on biological weapons.

"He was a quiet man who got on with his job. He did it with the highest professional standards," Whitty told the BBC.

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