British Prime Minister Tony Blair broke his silence on Saddam Hussein's hanging tonight, calling the manner of the execution "unacceptable" and "wrong".
Other ministers in Blair 's government have condemned the way Saddam was hanged. But Blair - US President George W. Bush's main ally in the invasion of Iraq - had not spoken out publicly until now, despite rising pressure to do so.
"As everybody saw, the manner of the execution is unacceptable and it's wrong, but we should ... not allow that ... then to lurch into a position of forgetting the victims of Saddam , the people that he killed deliberately," Blair told a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A mobile phone video showed observers taunting Saddam with shouts of "Go to hell" and chanting the name of a Shi'ite cleric before he fell through a gallows trapdoor on Dec. 30.
The images provoked international criticism and further inflamed sectarian passions in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has pledged an investigation.
Blair was on holiday at the Miami home of pop star Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees when the execution took place.
A spokeswoman for Blair said on Sunday the prime minister believed the manner of the execution was completely wrong but British media clamoured for Blair to speak out personally.
"The manner of the execution of Saddam was completely wrong but that should not blind us to the crimes he committed against his own people, including the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, one million casualties in the Iran-Iraq war and the use of chemical weapons against his own people, wiping out entire villages ...," Blair said.