[southnews] Blair: I was ready to quit over Iraq
Dave Muller
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview published that he
had instructed officials to prepare for his resignation if he lost a
crucial parliamentary vote on war with Iraq.
Blair told The Sun newspaper that he had been ready to quit if he was
defeated in last month's vote authorising military action by rebel
members of parliament in his own Labour party.
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Blair: I was ready to quit over Iraq
AFP Friday April 18, 21:16 PM
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview published that he
had instructed officials to prepare for his resignation if he lost a
crucial parliamentary vote on war with Iraq.
Blair told The Sun newspaper that he had been ready to quit if he was
defeated in last month's vote authorising military action by rebel members
of parliament in his own Labour party.
"In the end, it is a decision you put the whole of the premiership on the
line for," he told Britain's top-selling tabloid.
"It was always possible that you could be in that situation. But the point
is that some people are going to die as a result of your decision," he
said.
"In the end if you lose your premiership, well you lose it. But at least
you lose it on the basis of something that you believe in," he said.
On March 18, Blair won backing from parliament for war against Iraq, but
suffered a blow to his authority after MPs from his own party staged a huge
rebellion against his hardline stance.
After a highly charged nine-and-a-half-hour emergency debate in the run-up
to a likely conflict, the House of Commons backed a motion that Britain
should use "all means necessary" to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction. The motion was carried by 412 votes to 149.
But minutes earlier, 217 British parliamentarians out of a total of 659,
including more than 130 Labour MPs, voted for an amendment which stated
that the case for war with Iraq had "not yet been established".
"There were moments when it looked like we were getting bogged down and 10
days in you were worried how long was this going to go. Had we
miscalculated the degree of the depth of resistance?" Blair said.
He said that he had been bolstered by support from his family and from
people in the armed forces.
He insisted that launching military action was the right thing to do and
that he had been "very upset" at the failure of the UN Security Council to
back a second resolution authorising military action.
He praised Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for backing Britain and
the United States in the UN despite little support at home for war.
He branded comments by the fiercely anti-war Labour MP George Galloway -
who urged British soldiers not to fight - as "disgraceful and wrong" and
suggested that he could face disciplinary action from the Labour party
executive.
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Russia hits US with friendly ire
By Helen Womack
April 19 2003
When the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, called Washington's decision to
go to war a "grave political error", commentators were quick to say that
US-Russia relations had plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War.
But having spoken firmly, Mr Putin, a former KGB agent, refrained from
further rhetoric while he watched the coalition military campaign unfold
with a cold eye.
Contrast the low-key reaction to Russia's ambassador coming under fire when
his motorcade was caught in a firefight between Americans and Iraqis, with
Beijing's fury when American planes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
during the Kosovo conflict.
When the ambassador was then accused of trying to take Saddam Hussein's
archives out of Iraq, the claim was calmly denied. Russia similarly denied
that its arms companies had been supplying high-tech military equipment to
Iraq or that its security services had been training agents of the
Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police.
The Kremlin's "new realism" has yet to filter down to ordinary Russians,
who have protested passionately against the war on the streets of Moscow.
But Mr Putin, who faces an election next year, has perhaps calculated that
a calm approach to changed reality gives him the best chance of appearing
as a statesman.
Together with France and Germany, Russia was very active in trying to stop
George Bush from taking international law into his own hands over Saddam
Hussein's defiance of UN weapons inspectors. Washington took offence at
this perceived lack of loyalty.
Russia's co-operation with the US after September 11, 2001, when it did
more than NATO to help oust the Taliban from Afghanistan, may have led Mr
Bush to expect such support when he turned his attention to Iraq. Instead,
Russia threatened to use its veto in the UN Security Council.
Hoping a "new realism" might work both ways, Vladimir Frolov, the deputy
head of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, appealed to the
US to understand that a true friend is not a "yes man" but rather one who
dares to disagree with his ally.
"The signal from Putin to Bush is simple," he said. "We will not silently
support US actions which we regard as wrong but resist, to a reasonable
degree, those actions of Washington which we think make the world a more
dangerous place.
"Yes, we are allies in the struggle against international terrorism. But
this does not mean that Russia must share all American attitudes to this
problem. One would like to hope that the Bush Administration will see the
new realism in the Russia-US relationship as a logical and healthy
correction, rather than as a sign of primitive anti-Americanism."
With the so-called liberation of Iraq now a fait accompli, the Russians are
looking to the future. Russia's richest businessman, oil tycoon Mikhail
Khodorovsky, said his country's economic interests lay in co-operation with
America more than Europe or China, and Moscow should use the G8 group of
developed nations as a forum for self-expression. The Finance Minister,
Alexei Kudrin, suggested Russia might be willing to waive Iraq's debts to
Moscow if the world relieved Russia of the debts it inherited from the old
Soviet Union.
Analyst Dmitry Trenin wrote in The Moscow Times: "Tactically, they [Russia,
France and Germany] must know they have lost through miscalculation and
they have to accept this. They must also know that they will lose much more
heavily if they continue to oppose the United States and attempt to keep
their axis going. The troika has run its course."
Helen Womack worked in Moscow from 1990-2000 as a correspondent for The
Independent newspaper.
This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/18/1050172756358.html
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