BBC apologises unreservedly as chief resigns

BRITAIN: The BBC's director general, Mr Greg Dyke, resigned yesterday as the besieged corporation apologised unreservedly to the British government over its handling of the Iraqi arms dossier crisis.

Hundreds of staff walked off the job in a show of support for the popular executive.

As the Hutton inquiry claimed its second senior BBC scalp in as many days, Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair welcomed the apology, made on television by the broadcaster's acting chairman minutes after Mr Dyke quit.

Employees all over Britain staged impromptu demonstrations calling for assurances that the BBC's independence would not be compromised by changes being made to editorial procedures in the wake of the Hutton report. In an e-mail to staff that he described as the hardest he had ever written, Mr Dyke said: "I don't want to go and I'll miss everyone here hugely."

"I am responsible for the management so it's right I take responsibility for what happened. I accept that the BBC made errors of judgment and I've sadly come to the conclusion that it will be hard to draw a line under this whole affair while I am still here," he said.

Mr Dyke joined the BBC's former chairman, Mr Gavyn Davies, in quitting the BBC following the release of Lord Hutton's report into the suicide last June of weapons inspector Dr David Kelly.

The report faulted the BBC's editorial procedures for allowing the broadcast of what Lord Hutton called an "unfounded" allegation, that the government had ordered questionable additions to an intelligence dossier in order to justify joining the US in attacking Iraq. It said that the reporter Andrew Gilligan had made the allegations without the approval of his editors on Radio Four's high-profile Today programme, and had probably known they were inaccurate at the time of the broadcast.

The apology, made by the corporation's acting chairman, Lord Ryder, came amid growing disillusionment in many quarters with the conclusions of Lord Hutton's report, which handed Mr Blair a resounding political victory.

Mr Blair accepted the BBC's apology, saying that his government could now "draw a line" under the events of the past eight months "and move on." His former media spokesman, Mr Alastair Campbell, also said he was satisfied that the feud - largely prompted by his reaction to the contentious May 29th report - between Downing Street and the publicly-funded broadcaster had come to an end. Downing Street had expressed dissatisfaction with a qualified apology issued by Mr Dyke on Wednesday night