Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004
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By Hasan Suroor
LONDON, SEPT.28. Delegates at the Labour Party conference in Brighton booed the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, when he addressed them on Tuesday afternoon amid calls for him to apologise for the Iraq war, and withdraw British troops from the region. But a defiant Mr. Blair shrugged off repeated interruptions and insisted that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was right. The farthest he was prepared to go was to acknowledge that the `evidence' about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction had turned out to be wrong. "I acknowledge that (the intelligence on WMDS was wrong) but I cannot apologise for removing Saddam," he said declaring that the world was a better place without him. He admitted that Iraq had become a divisive issue but said it was wrong to suggest that he wanted to avoid a discussion on it at the conference. Instead, he wanted to take it "head on," he said.
Angry delegates
Mr. Blair had been barely minutes into his speech when the first protest came catching him almost unawares. "You can make your protest because we live in a democracy," he said, looking flustered, as the slogan-shouting protesters were bundled out. Half - way through the speech, just as he had started to warm up to the theme of his Government's achievements, there was, again, an uproar — and this time the number of angry, gesticulating delegates was even bigger, though it was not clear what they were protesting about. Mr. Blair tried to make light of it saying that after having been in power for seven and a half years, he had become used to protests, and then addressing the delegates said: "Are there any more of you (protesters), would you mind standing up again?"
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