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Blair Under Fire as Speech 'Undermines Legal Case for War'
Fri Jul 18 15:55:25 2003
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Blair Under Fire as Speech 'Undermines Legal Case for War'
Jul 18 2003

Critics of the war in Iraq raised concerns today over Tony Blair's speech to the US Congress.

Mr Blair appeared to back away in yesterday's speech from the argument that military action was justified by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

He received a rapturous reception as he said that history would forgive the US and UK if they were wrong about WMD, because they had at least unseated a cruel dictator.

But Liberal Democrat peer and former Labour minister Baroness Williams said Mr Blair's comments put the legal justification for Britain's involvement in the war in doubt.

Mr Blair asked last night, as only the fourth British Prime Minister to address both houses of Congress: "Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together?

"Let us say one thing. If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.

"But if our critics are wrong, if we are right as I believe with every fibre of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace, when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive."

But Baroness Williams told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I wish that it had been made clearer, when he walked away from the WMD argument, that that, of course, for the UK at least, undermines the legal basis on which we went to war."

Mr Blair was given 17 standing ovations by Congress members during last night's speech.

But in Britain, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said: "Despite his warm reception in Congress, the Prime Minister must bear in mind that his first responsibility is to the House of Commons and his own country, where clearly the jury remains firmly out on the war in Iraq."

And Labour's former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle - a staunch critic of the war - said he was concerned that Mr Blair appeared to be allying Britain too closely with the interests of the US.

He told Today: "He said last night that he will stand with the Americans in whatever they choose to do. I think we need some clarification on what that means.

"If the Prime Minister is true to his words last night, then if the US goes to war with North Korea, Iran or Syria, we will be there alongside them."

Mr Blair told Congress that the ideals of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law were not merely American or Western ideals, but "the universal values of the human spirit".

And he made clear his belief that the West must be ready to fight for these ideals.

"Just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty," he said.

"We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the compassion to make it universal."