By PAUL REDFERN
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT  

DID BRITAINÕS Secret Services acquiesce in the cover-up of Julie WardÕs murder 16 years ago because they believed former President Moi was mentally unstable and upsetting him could harm the thousands of Britons living in Kenya? 

That is the leading question that remains to be resolved by the Lincolnshire police force in the UK, following the conclusion of the inquest into the death of the British tourist on May 4. 

JulieÕs father John Ward set the cat among the pigeons when he declared that he had no faith in either BritainÕs Foreign Office, the British High Commission in Nairobi, or Scotland Yard, after they all, in different ways, tried to frustrate his inquiries. 

But he went one step further when he said that the attempts to frustrate his investigations might be at the bequest of BritainÕs M16 which was concerned at the "volatile" nature of President Moi at the time and had ordered copies of all diplomatic telegrams from Nairobi on the issue. 

Mr WardÕs claims of deliberate British attempts to either turn a blind eye to the Kenyan governmentÕs attempts to portray JulieÕs murder as an accident, or to actually add to the fantastic accounts of her death which were being portrayed, were given credence by the Suffolk coroner Dr Peter Dean, in his concluding comments. 

Moreover, the senior British police officer who has been ordered to investigate the role played by both Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office and the British High Commission believes senior officials have much to answer for. 

John Stoddart, the Deputy Chief Constable of Durham, told Mr Ward that there was "significant substance" for his suspicions of high level collusion between London and Nairobi over the murder in 1988. 

The police report into the case is due to be released either next month or in July and the Lincolnshire police now believe they have new evidence, new witnesses and new forensic techniques to allow for a new murder investigation. 

Crucially also however, both Mr Ward and the British police believe there is a new climate of co-operation from both the Kenyan government and Kenyans who will no longer be frightened to come forward. 

"We can now find people who are complicit in this crime who have guilty knowledge and who can provide the answers to this appalling murder," Mr Stoddart said. 

The whole inquest made huge headlines in the UK last week with most interest focused on M16Õs involvement and the statement by Kenya's Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi promising the full co-operation of the Kenyan government in the future. Despite the passage of time, Mr Ward himself remains more optimistic than ever that his daughterÕs killers will finally be brought to justice. 

He will draw heart from the concluding comments of Dr Dean, who said: "It is impossible not to have been moved by the unrelenting dedication of Mr Ward and his sheer determination to seek the truth against what appears to have been a mounting wall of official obstruction and ludicrous misinformation."