BRITAIN: Tony Blair defied Britain's historic weekend peace protest with what was effectively a call for regime change in Iraq.
Varying estimates agreed that at least one million people joined Saturday's anti-war march to London's Hyde Park on a day when newspaper headlines declared the Prime Minister "blixed" by a second weapons inspectors' report leaving Britain and the United States seemingly more isolated at the United Nations.
The London turnout exceeded the wildest expectations of the organisers, dwarfing last autumn's massive countryside protest and making it the largest peacetime demonstration ever witnessed in the capital.
However, an uncompromising Mr Blair sent a message to the massed army of protesters that he had "a moral purpose equalling theirs" and that there would be "consequences paid in blood" for failure now to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction.
Addressing Labour's spring conference in Glasgow ahead of a 70,000-strong protest there, Mr Blair declared: "Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity. It is leaving him there that is inhumane."
Closing the conference yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Prescott, led ministerial rallying cries with a call to Labour supporters to put their trust in Mr Blair's "courage and integrity" over Iraq.
Mr Prescott said: "War is an ugly, costly, dehumanising scar on the human existence. No decent, no rational person would ever choose war over peace." But he continued: "History teaches us that actions against humanity by evil people in defiance of international law cannot always be stopped by persuasion, by intellectual appeal, by economic sanctions or even dire threat."
As Mr Blair admitted for the first time that his premiership could be on the line, the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, confirmed the building tensions inside the Labour Party when he urged those who had "left the party or who were toying with quitting" to think again.
Those dangers were manifest on London's streets on Saturday, where people openly discussed whether war in Iraq might be the "end" of Mr Blair's leadership, and at the Hyde Park rally, where references to Mr George Bush brought loud confirmation of the extent of British public hostility towards the American President.
To deafening cheers, playwright Harold Pinter claimed that American barbarism would "destroy the world" and described the US as a country "run by a bunch of criminals . . . with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug."
Rap singer Ms Dynamite asked of Mr Blair: "For how long will you lie and deceive this country and speak so many words but very few truths? Don't underestimate or insult our intelligence . . . He who preaches war is the devil's chaplain, he is tarnished by the beast."