LONDON, 19 November 2006 — Downing Street moved swiftly yesterday to dampen an apparent overnight admission by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a disaster.
Questioning Blair on Al Jazeera’s new English-language channel, in an interview broadcast late Friday, broadcaster Sir David Frost suggested that the 2003 invasion of Iraq, backed by Britain despite widespread criticism, had “so far been pretty much of a disaster.”
“It has,” Blair said, before adding quickly: “But you see, what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It’s not difficult because of some accident in planning.
“It’s difficult because there’s a deliberate strategy — Al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shiite militias on the other — to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war.” Downing Street insisted yesterday that Blair’s comments had been misrepresented.
“The prime minister does not use the word disaster,” a spokesperson told AFP.
“What he does is set out that the violence in Iraq is of course hugely regrettable, tragic and very very difficult, but that this violence is a result of malicious external intervention, not some planning error three years ago.” However, Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats party, Britain’s third-biggest political party, lambasted the Labour government over its record in Iraq — and demanded an apology from Blair.
“At long last the enormity of the decision to take military action against Iraq is being accepted by the prime minister,” Campbell said. “It could hardly be otherwise as the failure of strategy becomes so clear.
“If the prime minister accepts that it is a ‘disaster’ then surely Parliament and the British people, who were given a flawed prospectus, are entitled to an apology.”
