Willing to Pay 'Blood Price' for US: British PM Blair

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, September 06, 2002

Willing to Pay 'Blood Price' for US: British PM Blair

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British Prime Minister Tony Blair, gearing up for talks on Iraq with President Bush, said he was prepared for Britain to pay "a blood price" to maintain its special relationship with the United States.

In comments likely to fuel speculation of British involvement in any military action against Iraq, Blair said it was important the Americans knew they could count on Britain for more than expressions of sympathy and support in a crisis.

"They need to know, Are you prepared to commit, are you prepared to be there when the shooting starts?,"' he said in a BBC television documentary to be screened on Sunday.

Although Blair said that no decision had been taken on any possible action against Iraq, he said that military action was sometimes "inevitable."

But the prime minister, often criticized in the British media and by some MPs for being a "poodle" to Bush, was keen to stress that the U.S. did not dictate Britain's policy.

"I would never back America if I thought they were doing something wrong," he said.

Bush has stepped up his campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in recent days and will hold hastily-convened talks with Blair at Camp David in the United States on Saturday.

The prime minister's trip comes amid mounting pressure at home to recall parliament from its summer break to debate Iraq.

Cabinet member and former foreign secretary Robin Cook on Friday stepped up the pressure on Blair to gain a fresh United Nations mandate ahead of any military strike on Iraq.

"If we are to succeed in curbing Saddam's military ambitions, we have a better chance of success if we have the world with us and Saddam isolated," Cook told the Financial Times in an interview.

"The best place to build that international coalition is the United Nations. It is United Nations resolutions that Saddam, after all, has been breaching."

Blair's trip to the U.S. ends a globe-trotting week that has revived memories of his extensive travels after the September 11 attacks on the U.S. when he threw himself into building an international terrorism against coalition.

On Thursday he attended the wedding of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar's daughter. His presence, along with that of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, underlined an alliance between the three European premiers.

Earlier he flew to Mozambique and then to Johannesburg to take part in the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development.

A senior government source told Reuters that Blair would go to Russia next month for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

But with opposition politicians as well as some within his own party clamoring for parliament's recall, Blair's travels are likely to irk many at home.

Opposition Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith gave his support to action against Iraq but called on Blair to speed up his publication of a dossier of evidence against Saddam and then hold a debate.

Source: Agencies

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