LONDON : A judicial inquiry into the suicide of defence expert David Kelly has cleared British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government of "dishonourable conduct", The Sun newspaper said.
The paper said it had seen extracts of the conclusions of the report by Lord Brian Hutton which is to be made public at 12:30 pm (1230 GMT) on Wednesday, with Blair to make a statement in parliament 90 minutes later.
"Lord Hutton concludes there was no 'dishonourable, underhand or duplicitious strategy' by the government to leak Dr Kelly's name", the Sun, Britain's best-selling newspaper, said.
Kelly, a respected Ministry of Defence expert on biological weapons, killed himself in July soon after he was exposed as the source of a BBC radio report in May which alleged that the government had "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
The Sun said the report -- which Hutton went to great pains to keep under wraps before its publication time -- criticised BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan for failing to put his story to the Ministry of Defence before airing it.
But it added that Hutton's report largely cleared Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon of wrongdoing.
Political analysts had widely expected that Hoon would take the fall for the Kelly affair.
- AFP