An inquiry into the apparent suicide of a leading government arms expert, will warm up today for British Prime Minister Tony Blair by grilling a top intelligence figure on a disputed Iraqi weapons dossier.

On Thursday, Blair will testify, with polls saying two-thirds of Britons believe he misled the country over the reasons for going to war in Iraq, and a majority saying that Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon should resign over the row.

Blair launched an inquiry on July 18 into the death of David Kelly, hours after the body of the biological weapons expert was found in woodland near his home in the English countryside, west of London.

Three days earlier Kelly, a former UN arms inspector in Iraq, had faced a public probe into BBC allegations that the government had "sexed up" the intelligence on Iraq's weapons potential in a dossier published in September last year.

Among 9 000 pages published by the inquiry late Saturday were notes of government meetings suggesting the Prime Minister was intimately involved in deciding whether Kelly should be named as the source of the BBC report.

Just two days before Blair was due to testify, the chairperson of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), John Scarlett, will emerge from the shadows to answer questions on the dossier, which he was in charge of preparing.

The JIC is an umbrella for Britain's intelligence community containing a small number of top figures from the security services that advise the government regularly on intelligence matters at home and abroad.

As well as being asked about his role in drawing up the dossier - he has insisted he was happy with its contents - Scarlett was likely to face questions about what advice he gave about the handling of Kelly.

Documents released over the weekend by the inquiry included one detailing a meeting in Blair's office, in which Scarlett asked: "If Kelly name becomes public will government be criticised for putting him under 'wider pressure'?" He was also certain to be asked about a note he wrote calling for "a proper security-style interview" to be conducted with Kelly to clarify apparent inconsistencies in his statement about his meeting with a BBC journalist.

Although the evidence to be given today was sure to be of interest, the main events this week will be the appearance tomorrow of Hoon and the following day by Blair.

Hoon has borne the brunt of criticism for the emergence of Kelly's name.

One Labour party lawmaker, Fabian Hamilton, suggested over the weekend that the defence secretary may have to be a "sacrificial lamb" at the end of the inquiry.

Having returned from his summer holiday in Barbados, Blair spent the weekend at his country residence at Chequers, outside London, being briefed by government lawyers on his evidence to the inquiry.

Some 40 000 British troops were sent to war in Iraq after two intelligence dossiers, published in September 2002 and February 2003, helped to convince a sceptical British parliament to back military action. – Sapa-AFP.