BRITAIN: The British Prime Minister has warned his troubled and divided Labour Party that "sometimes . . . the only chance for peace is a readiness for war".
Mr Blair emerged yesterday after his main speech to the Labour Party's annual conference clearly retaining the option to back a US-led strike against Iraq, with or without the explicit approval of the United Nations.
On Monday, 40 per cent of the delegates in Blackpool had supported a motion calling on Labour to back Nelson Mandela in opposing any military action.
Yesterday, Mr Blair stuck to the formula which has so far prevented cabinet resignations, asserting his preference to follow "the United Nations route", having the Security Council "lay down the ultimatum" and Saddam Hussein comply with the UN's will over the destruction of weapons of mass destruction.
He acknowledged that most of his party was with him up to that point. "But here is the hard part," he told them bluntly: "If he doesn't comply, then consider. If at this moment having found the collective will to recognise the danger we lose our collective will to deal with it, then we will destroy not the authority of America or Britain but of the United Nations itself."
This directly countered leading cabinet doubter Ms Clare Short, who reportedly said shortly before Mr Blair's speech that unilateral US action would trigger the break-up of UN authority. Ms Short subsequently told the BBC she "completely" agreed with Mr Blair's speech.
But when pressed on the possibility that the US and UK might proceed without explicit UN approval, she said: "I wouldn't like that . . . If we start separating up it's very dangerous for the world."
In his speech Mr Blair cast "partnership" as "the antidote to unilateralism". And he again attacked anti-US sentiment.
"It's easy to be anti-American," he said: "There's a lot of it about but remember where and when this alliance was forged: here in Europe, in World War 11 when Britain and America and every decent citizen in Europe joined forces to liberate Europe from the Nazi evil."
And he continued: "My vision of Britain is not as the 51st state of anywhere but I believe in this alliance, and I will fight long and hard to maintain it."
Mr Blair also told the conference that Israel and the Palestinians must resume full peace talks by the end of the year.
He said United Nations resolutions must be implemented across the Middle East, not just in Baghdad.
"Yes, what is happening in the Middle East now is ugly and wrong - the Palestinians living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless, \ Israeli civilians brutally murdered," he said.
"I agree UN resolutions should apply here as much as to Iraq," he said. "But they don't just apply to Israel. They apply to all parties and there is only one answer. By this year's end, we must have revived final-status negotiations and they must have explicitly as their aims an Israeli state free from terror, recognised by the Arab world, and a viable Palestinian state based on the boundaries of 1967." He added: "Our values aren't Western values. "They're human values and anywhere, anytime people are given the chance, they embrace them."