"We act because we must." With those words the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, last night committed Britain to the US-led war against President Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Against the backdrop of the Downing Street Christmas tree, Mr Blair - looking calm and assertive - told the assembled press corps, "Earlier today I gave authority for UK forces to be deployed against Iraq."
Confirming the beginning of Operation Desert Fox, Mr Blair confided his personal responsibility in an international crisis set to engulf the Labour Party in bitter internal debate. "There can be no greater responsibility upon a Prime Minister than to ask British servicemen to risk their lives for the sake of peace and stability in another part of the world," he said.
Mr Blair went on: "British involvement will be significant and I thank them for their bravery and their professionalism, and I wish them well in what we will be asking of them."
Earlier yesterday, in the House of Commons, the Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, pressed Mr Blair to confirm that the removal of President Hussein was now a prior objective of Western diplomatic and military policy.
But in his dramatic Downing Street statement, Mr Blair failed to identify this British objective, saying: "Following the Butler Report, after more than a year of obstruction and a catalogue of obstruction, we have no option but to act." He continued: "Our objectives in this military action are clear: to degrade his (Saddam's) capability to build and use weapons of mass destruction, and, to diminish the military threat he poses to his neighbours."
As British and US war planes went into action, Mr Blair said: "This action could have been avoided. Since the Gulf War, the entire international community has worked to stop Saddam Hussein from keeping and developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and from continuing to threaten his neighbours. For the safety and stability of the region, and the wider world, he cannot be allowed to do so. If he will not, through reason and diplomacy, abandon his weapons of mass destruction programme, it must be degraded and diminished by military force."
Rehearsing the diplomatic efforts of the years since the end of the Gulf War, Mr Blair said: "Over the past few years we have engaged in endless diplomacy at every level and of every kind. We must face the facts. Saddam Hussein has no intention of abiding by the agreements he has made."
Mr Blair continued: "UN Resolution 687 bringing to an end the Gulf War made it a condition of the ceasefire both that Iraq destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and agree to the monitoring of its obligation to destroy such weapons. Despite constant lies, prevarication and breaching of the agreed conditions, the weapons inspectors carried out their task, uncovering in the process vast evidence of weapons of mass destruction capability."