'History will be my judge'

Tony Blair, in an exclusive interview, says demos and rebels will not deflect him over Iraq

Jackie Ashley in Madrid, and Ewen MacAskill
Saturday March 1, 2003
The Guardian

Tony Blair brushed aside the massive anti-war demonstrations, the Commons revolt and concessions by Saddam Hussein, and insisted yesterday that he would not be deflected from his determination to disarm Iraq.

In an interview with the Guardian, he said history had proved him right over Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Afghanistan and he would let history be the judge of his Iraq policy.

In his first reaction to the revolt of 121 Labour MPs on Wednesday - the largest rebellion against a prime minister from his own benches in more than 100 years - Mr Blair said it was important to remember that the Commons as a whole backed his policy.

"I've never claimed to have a monopoly of wisdom, but one thing I've learned in this job is you should always try to do the right thing, not the easy thing. Let the day-to-day judgments come and go: be prepared to be judged by history."

In a comparison likely to inflame the anti-war camp, he said that appeasers in the 1930s had been decent people but had turned out to be wrong.

Defending himself against the charge that he was behaving like George Bush's poodle, he portrayed himself as a hawk in his own right.

"It's worse than you think. I believe in it. I am truly committed to dealing with this, irrespective of the position of America," he said.

"If the Americans were not doing this, I would be pressing for them to be doing so."

Mr Blair was speaking on a flight to Spain at the end of a momentous week in which he has had his political authority challenged as never before. The relentless pressure he is under - yesterday he was in Madrid in the morning and faced anti-war demonstrators in Swansea in the afternoon - was evident in his hoarse voice and apparent tiredness.

He was in Spain for talks with the prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar who, along with Mr Blair, is the closest ally of the US in the confrontation with Iraq. Both Mr Blair and Mr Aznar dismissed as insufficient Iraq's latest concession, a promise to destroy from today its al-Samoud 2 missiles, and said it was a distraction from hidden arsenals of biological and chemical weapons.

A climax to the Iraq crisis appears to be approaching fast, with the UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, due to report next Friday and with the UN security council expected to vote on a resolution the following week that could trigger war later this month.

In the Guardian interview, Mr Blair dismissed French calls for more time for the inspectors, saying that it would serve no purpose: "It's all very well to say put in more inspections, but it's a pointless exercise."

He expressed pessimism about the chances of avoiding war, saying he was unimpressed by the concessions being made by President Saddam.

"Of course he's going to throw out concessions the whole time, the nearer military action gets, the concessions will be brought out, that is what he has played for 12 years."

Downing Street's main hope is that the US-British military threat could yet produce a diplomatic triumph, forcing President Saddam to disarm without a shot being fired. But that required a credible military threat, Mr Blair said.

He cautioned that anti-war campaigners in Britain could undermine this because the Iraqis "will get reports of the House of Commons debate, the demonstrations, the criticisms".

He added that he was not suggesting people should cease to question government policy.

"People are perfectly entitled to do that, but at the moment the world is giving him a very mixed message, and I have always said the only way you ever deal with him is through a strong message."

Ultimately, the prime minister said, nothing will change unless President Saddam cooperates and he did not believe that would happen.

At various points in the interview, he betrayed his irritation with his party's left and with what he referred to as "Guardian readers".

"I know there will be people who read the Guardian and say you can't believe a word the British intelligence says, it is all made up," he said, going on to defend the integrity of the intelligence services. "Look, I know these people, I work with them. The evidence we get out of Iraq is absolutely overwhelming that there is a systematic campaign of intimidation of the scientists."

Mr Blair insisted that intelligence reports show continuing intimidation of Iraqi scientists, and that while he could not disclose all the intelligence he sees, "in the end people have just got to make up their minds whether they believe me or not, I'm afraid". He also said that while there were lots of obvious differences between appeasers in the 1930s and those opposed to war against Iraq now, there were similarities.

"When people decided not to confront fascism, they were doing the popular thing, they were doing it for good reasons, and they were good people ... but they made the wrong decision," he said. The prime minister suggested he wants a quick end to the conflict: "If you do act early, you have to do less, fewer people get hurt and you reduce the possibility that it spreads."

He denied that the Americans had any intention of staying on in Iraq. "The US will not stay in Iraq a day longer than they have to. The idea that this is some kind of US imperialism is completely absurd." Despite all the knocks he has taken this week, there is no sign that Mr Blair is prepared to soften his views.

His job, he said, was to express how he felt and to explain why he believed what he was doing was right. "And why I believe that to do what the opponents of my position want us to do would be very, very dangerous for our country and the world."