Senior judge Brian Hutton has refused to send drafts of his report to ministers, officials, and others, including the BBC -- expected to be the subject of his criticism -- the Financial Times reported.

"It's going to come as a bolt out of the blue," said a government official quoted in the newspaper.

"We're being given no advance warning at all," the official said.

Hutton is expected to submit his report to Charles Falconer, constitutional affairs secretary, early next year.

The Financial Times said that January 12 had been touted as a possible publication date and that the government would be unlikely to delay it for risk of being accused of a cover-up.

The report will come months after Hutton and several lawyers quizzed Blair and other key government and BBC figures about the events that led to Kelly's presumedly suicidal death in July.

Kelly, 59, a defence ministry expert on Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, and a former UN inspector in Iraq, was the anonymous source of the BBC report which alleged that Downing Street had "sexed up" intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In particular, the report challenged the most sensational claim in a September 2002 dossier on Iraq that Blair put before parliament -- that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes.

Downing Street insisted the BBC retract the story. It refused. In the row that ensued, Kelly was exposed as its source and forced to face aggressive questioning before a parliamentary committee.

Within days, a despondent Kelly left his home in Oxfordshire for a walk, slit his wrist and bled to death, leaving no suicide note.

The discovery of his body on July 18 hurled Blair, then embarking on a tour of East Asia, into the most serious crisis of his six years in office.