British PM should apologise for immoral war: Tutu


Heidelberg, Germany: Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has accused US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of being on a “witch hunt” leading up to the war in Iraq.
In a German Press interview to appear today, Blix criticised the United States and Britain for their “credulous and scandalously foolish” behaviour in the Iraq crisis.
“We said before the war that there was no proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but they ignored that,” he told the Mannheimer Morgen daily newspaper.
Blix said he did not believe Bush or Blair deliberately lied to the public over weapons of mass destruction.
But “if one believes in witches then every coffee cup is proof of something”. Bush and Blair “were on a witch hunt and now bear the responsibility”, he said.
Blix also complained that some individuals in the US defence department treated him and his UN team with contempt. This was “shocking and annoying”, he said.
Blix, who will be giving a lecture in Berlin Tuesday on the Iraq conflict, has recently been outspoken in his criticism of events leading up to the war.
Earlier this month he told the British Broadcasting Corporation in an interview that Britain and the United States dramatised intelligence information to bolster the argument for the Iraq war.
n LONDON: Archbishop Desmond Tutu will challenge Blair and Bush to apologise for pursuing a counterproductive and “immoral” war in Iraq, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
In a speech he was due to give in London yesterday Tutu will say the turmoil after the war proved it is an illusion to believe that “force and brutality” leads to greater security, the Independent reported.
It said Tutu would ridicule the “dangerously flawed” intelligence Britain and the United States used to justify military action in Iraq.
“An immoral war was thus waged and the world is a great deal less safe place than before,” the paper quoted him as saying.
“It is large-hearted and courageous people who are not diminished by saying ‘I made a mistake’. Bush and Blair would recover considerable credibility and respect if the were able to say, ‘Yes we made a mistake’”, said the Nobel prize winner.
n FRANKFURT: Nato is unlikely to make a decision to go ahead with a deployment in Iraq before the end of the year, German Defence Minister Peter Struck said in a newspaper interview published yesterday.
He said the alliance’s summit in Istanbul in June may well send a political signal that it wanted to help — but actually pressing ahead would depend on security conditions which were currently far from being met.
Struck told the Frankfurter Rundschau daily that the June summit was likely to agree that if the right political conditions were met, “the heads of state and government would be ready seriously to examine a UN demand on the basis of a request from a legitimate Iraqi transitional government”.
But asked if it meant Nato could decide this year on formally engaging in the troubled country, he said: “No, I don’t think so.” As for next year, “perhaps” was all he could say. The minister said the conditions for a military deployment were “far from being fulfilled”. He also downplayed the scale of any engagement, saying that “the idea that Nato soldiers will replace 20,000 Americans is completely delusional.”
– Agencies


photo;A vendor displays carnival masks depicting Brazilian Finance Minister Antonio Palocci (top left), President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (top right), former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, US President George W Bush and Osama Bin Laden at a shop in Brasilia yesterday. The masks have become popular as Brazil heads into its annual carnival season festivities. – Reuters
Last update on: 17-2-2004