Lord Brian Hutton will hold a preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, at which he will set out how he intends to conduct his inquiry and hear applications from interested parties.

It will then be adjourned until after Kelly's funeral, which "will not take place for some time," the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which acts as Britain's justice ministry, said in a statement.

Lord Hutton, a former chief justice in Northern Ireland, decided to go ahead with a preliminary hearing after meeting Kelly's widow on Saturday at her home in Oxfordshire, southern England.

Kelly, a respected Ministry of Defence expert on Iraqi biological weapons and a former UN arms inspector, was found dead with a slit wrist on July 18, a day after he went missing after leaving his home for a countryside walk.

The BBC has said he was the source of a May 29 report -- hotly disputed by the prime minister's office -- that Tony Blair's staff had "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to beef up the case for war.

The 50-page dossier notably included a claim that Iraq under Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes.

According to the BBC radio report, that assertion was inserted despite reservations among intelligence chiefs, who were concerned that it had come from a single source.

Earlier Monday, Blair's spokesman dismissed allegations by a former senior cabinet minister that an "abuse of power" by the prime minister helped to drive Kelly to suicide.

The allegation was levelled by Clare Short, who lashed out in the Independent newspaper at Blair as a "neo-conservative" with an "obsession with spin," or media manipulation.

"I don't think that anyone reading the interview this morning will have been in the least bit surprised by anything Clare Short says," the prime minister's spokesman told journalists.

"She has said very similar things in other comments. I think therefore it is best to let Clare speak for herself and we will continue to speak for ourselves."

Blair's spokesman also kept tight-lipped about speculation that the prime minister's close aide and media strategist Alastair Campbell would quit later this year in the wake of the Kelly affair.

"Alastair Campbell has gone on holiday. We wish him well. He will return in September, to the same job," he said.

The controversy over the dossier has fed a bitter row between Blair's government and the BBC, the world's biggest and best-known public broadcaster, which fiercely guards its editorial independence.

Short, who quit as Blair's overseas development minister in April in protest over the Iraq war, claimed that Kelly's death was at least partially caused by the government.

"We must deal with Dr Kelly, and the abuse of power that helped drive him to his death," she said.

"But we must also deal with the questions of how we went to war in Iraq and how much half-truth and deceit there was on the way," she said.

She also said that Hutton's inquiry should lead to resignations.

"The truth needs to be found and those responsible need to be held to account," Short said. "Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair work very, very closely together. They are all implicated, it seems to me."

WAR.WIRE