Poll: Most Britons Think They were Misled over Iraq

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 14, 2003

Poll: Most Britons Think They were Misled over Iraq

An opinion poll published Monday onthe British Daily Mirror newspaper found that the majority of Britons thought Prime Minister Tony Blair had misled the country over Iraq.

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An opinion poll published Monday onthe British Daily Mirror newspaper found that the majority of Britons thought Prime Minister Tony Blair had misled the country over Iraq.

The ICM survey found that 66 percent of those asked believed Blair had misled them, either knowingly or unknowingly, over the case for the US-led war against Iraq before he sent British troopsinto action.

The poll showed that only 29 percent of the 1,012 adults questioned said Blair did not mislead the country, slightly above the 27 percent who said he knowingly gave them false information.

About 39 percent of the respondents thought Blair did not mean to mislead them, but did.

The survey also found that 35 percent of the British people hadlost confidence in Blair because of the war, with 11 percent of Blair's ruling Labor Party saying they had lost faith.

The poll is seen as a further blow to Blair, who made the threat from Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction the major justification for the US-led war in Iraq.

Blair, who has been under great pressure over the failure to find the banned weapons in Iraq, is facing another week of tough questions on Iraq as pressure continues to build over the validityof his stated reasons for going to war, local reports said.

On Sunday, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix criticized Britain's claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, saying Blair was "fundamentally mistaken" over the allegation that came in the government's dossier on Iraq last September.

There would be little respite for Blair when he travels to Washington on Thursday as the row over whether ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger rumbles on, reports said.

US President George W. Bush and the CIA have sought to distancethemselves from the claim, saying it should not have appeared in Bush's State of the Union speech in January, albeit attributed to the British government.

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