He also emphatically dismissed demands for his resignation as he faced the worst crisis of his political career.

"Absolutely," the prime minister said when asked in a Sky News television interview whether he intended to remain in office.

Blair, speaking during his East Asia tour, said he thought recalling parliament would "generate more heat than light."

"I don't think it would be appropriate," he said, looking rested and recovered after the initial shock of Kelly's suicide.

"We need a period of reflection and a period in which the judge that's been given the task of carrying out the inquiry can carry out the inquiry, and also allow the family the time to grieve."

Lord Hutton has been picked to head an independent judicial probe into the suicide of Kelly, 59, a mild-mannered Ministry of Defence expert on Iraq weapons of mass destruction.

He was thought to have been the anonymous source of a May 29 BBC news report -- hotly denied by Downing Street -- that a key dossier last September on Iraq had exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.

Last Tuesday he confounded that suspicion when he told a parliamentary committee that he was not the main source of the report. On Friday he was found dead in woods near his home, with a wrist slashed.

Blair promised full cooperation with Hutton: "In the end, the government is my responsibility, and I can assure you the judge will be able to get to all the facts, and all the people, and all the papers that he wants to."

"What has happened is absolutely awful... I don't think anybody in any quarter wanted or anticipated this happening. But because of the seriousness of what has happened, because someone has died as a result of the events of the past few weeks, I think it is right that the judge carries out the inquiry."

"I don't really think we would gain anything by having parliamentarians coming back and debating something before they have actually got the judge's report," he said.

Opposition Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has been at the forefront of calls for Blair to cut short his trip and recall parliament, which went into summer recess last Wednesday.

Blair spoke to Sky News political editor Adam Boulton at Hakone, a Japanese mountain spa resort where he and his wife Cherie spent the weekend as guests of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

The interview was recorded for broadcast Sunday in Britain as Blair flew on to Seoul and, later in the day, Beijing. He wraps up his East Asia tour later on Thursday in Hong Kong.

On Saturday, Blair dramatically refused to speak when asked at a press conference with Koizumi whether he would resign with "blood on your hands", and in Sunday's interview he did not mention stepping down.

On Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found in the wake of Saddam Hussein's downfall, Blair said hiding such weapons was an integral part of the way the ex-Iraqi dictator sought to develop them.

"There is an assumption running that actually the whole issue to do with Saddam and weapons of mass destruction, well, it was just a strange invention of the CIA or British intelligence," he said.

"It certainly was not. The intelligence we had was real ... I believe that intelligence to be genuine."

WAR.WIRE