| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blair: I'd do same again on Iraq
BOURNEMOUTH, England (CNN) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair has told his ruling Labour Party he stands by his decision to go to war with Iraq despite widespread opposition among Britons and his own activists. Blair was addressing his party's annual conference on Tuesday in the southern English coastal resort of Bournemouth, as a new NOP poll revealed about 60 percent of Britons believed he lied over the threat posed by Iraq. In his speech, he made no apologies for the war in Iraq, saying the world -- and Britain -- was now a safer place without President Saddam Hussein in power. "Iraq has divided the international community," Blair admitted. "It has divided the party, the country, families, friends. "I know many profoundly believe the action we took was wrong. I do not at all disrespect anyone who disagrees with me. "I ask just one thing: Attack my decision but at least understand why I took it and why I would take the same decision again." Blair shrugged off the U.S.-led coalition's failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the alleged threat of which was the UK government's main justification for ousting Saddam. "Imagine you are PM, and you receive this intelligence and not just about Iraq but about the whole murky trade in WMD .... So what do I do? "Say 'I've got the intelligence but I've a hunch it's wrong?''' A judicial inquiry into the apparent suicide of a weapons expert exposed as the source of a BBC report that claimed Blair's office exaggerated the Iraqi threat has further undermined the prime minister. Intelligence chiefs have conceded that warnings about the threat of Iraqi WMD were misinterpreted in a September 2002 dossier. But Blair maintained the danger posed by such weapons represented the "security threat of the 21st century." "There was no easy choice. So whatever we each of us thought, let us agree on this. We who started the war must finish the peace." Blair also told his party to stay on track, adding that his government was on course for a third term. "The choice is forward or back -- I can only go one way. I haven't got a reverse gear," he said. "This is a time for renewal not retreat," Blair said. "No other Labour government has come so far. We now have the prospect of a full third term. That is there for the taking -- ours to win, ours to lose. We must get on with it." Standing ovationThe prime minister said there could be no reversing controversial policies for shaking up public services, including raising fees for university students and introducing private investment into the state-funded National Health Service. Blair has been in office for six years, having won a landslide general election in May 1997 and reelection in 2001. No Labor government has served longer than seven years. Each term is a maximum of five years. But he admitted he had he had reached a "testing time" time in his leadership. "I now look my age," the 50-year-old premier joked. CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley said the seven-minute standing ovation at the conference confirmed that predictions of Blair's political demise were premature. "Despite a controversial war, a battle with the BBC and plunging polls, he is, he admitted, older, tougher and battered. But he's going on. "Blair came through the potentially difficult ordeal by confronting the main issues, by acknowledging how the Iraq issue had divided his party," Oakley added. "The reformist Blair told his party that modernising was not selling out, and reminded them it had made him the first Labour leader to be six years in office, with more to come. This may have mollified some critics, but not everybody cheered and the polls still look bleak. But Blair lives to fight another day."
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
