Labour legend John Prescott has said he was wrong to support war in Iraq, admitting it “cannot be justified”.
Tony Blair insisted just a few days ago Britain was right to take part in the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
And Lord Prescott helped make the case for war as Mr Blair’s deputy PM at the time.
But Lord Prescott has changed his mind and said in an interview: “I go through my thoughts trying to justify it, but that’s... it cannot be justified as an intervention.”
Lord Prescott was speaking on BBC1’s This Week politics programme ahead of the 10th anniversary of the conflict on March 19.
He revealed US president George Bush persuaded him to support it by promising a peace plan for Israel and Palestine.
However, the Palestine plan “fell apart as it often does in American politics because the influence domestically is too great”, the peer said.
He added: “Tony Blair obviously said to himself, ‘I’ve promised to do this and I’m going to do it’.”
Mr Blair said earlier this week that he had given up trying to justify the invasion of Iraq, which he admitted “remains extremely divisive and very difficult.”
But he insisted that the situation would have been much worse if the dictator had been allowed to stay, describing him as 20 times worse than Bashar Assad of Syria.
“The answer is not to say to people: I’m afraid we should have left Saddam in charge because otherwise these sectarians will come in and try and destabilise the country.
“The answer is you get rid of the oppressive dictatorship and then you have a long hard struggle to push these sectarian elements out too.”
Foreign Secretary William Hague has written to current Cabinet members urging them not to discuss the justification for the war, reinforcing agreed Government policy not to prejudice the outcome of the Chilcot inquiry into the war due later this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment