Defiant Blair stands firm on Iraq war

Tony Blair broke his self-imposed silence on Iraq yesterday by reiterating that he had not changed his views "one jot or one iota" to back President Bush's determination for war with Iraq.

In a clear signal to his critics in the parliamentary Labour party and the trade unions, he insisted: "Doing nothing is not an option" as far as Saddam Hussein is concerned.

In his first comments since returning from his summer break, he told reporters at the beginning of a three-day visit to Africa that no decisions on how to tackle Saddam's regime had been taken but that the world could not stand idly by while Iraq is in "flagrant breach" of United Nations resolutions.

"That's the only decision that's been taken. What we do about that is an open question."

While standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in public, Blair is working fervently behind the scenes to persuade Bush to build as wide as possible an international coalition against Iraq. Part of Blair's strategy is a huge diplomatic effort to obtain fresh UN Security Council resolutions against Iraq, which would legitimise a US-led military campaign.

Meanwhile in the US, a poll for Time/CNN has found a dramatic fall in support for military intervention in Iraq, with only 51% in favour compared to 70% at the start of the year.

Former US President Bill Clinton said yesterday that the US should not go it alone against Saddam. He warned: "The real question is whether an attack now, especially if we had to go it alone, would increase the security of the US and our friends and allies."

There appeared to be little prospect of the US garnering support from anywhere in Europe outside the UK and Italy. At a meeting in Denmark on Saturday, EU foreign ministers attempted to paper over their differences by reaffirming their support for UN-led efforts to secure the return of weapons inspectors to Baghdad.

But at the meeting in Elsinore Castle, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer repeated Berlin's strong opposition to any military operation to unseat Saddam. He stressed the regional dangers of armed intervention, noting that the wider Arab world fiercely opposes such a move, especially in the absence of a peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians.

In Elsinore, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw once again emphasised that the readmission of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq would make the prospect of war recede.

Straw's comments, hinting that the UK would rather find a diplomatic settlement, were seized on by the opposition as evidence of a rift between the UK and senior members of the Bush administration who spent the week threatening Saddam in a series of bullish speeches.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said no amount of spin could conceal the fact that there is a widening gulf between Whitehall and the hawks in the White House. "If this persists, sooner or later Britain may have to choose between the US and the UN," said Campbell. "Blair must use his influence on Bush to persuade him against precipitate military action."

However, Blair remained optimistic that a coalition against Iraq could be assembled, citing the actionin Kosovo and Afghanistan as models where Britain and America had acted "in a calm, measured and sensible way with the broadest possible international support".

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