BRITAIN: The international community must confront the twin threats posed by President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism or face a "living nightmare", the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said yesterday.
Addressing Labour Party activists in Swansea, Mr Blair maintained that he sees - almost on a daily basis - evidence of plotting around the world by terrorists "desperately seeking a chink through the security infrastructure that protects our nation and others".
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation has been trying to develop a "dirty" nuclear bomb, he told his audience.
With repressive regimes such as Saddam's also desperate to develop such weapons, Mr Blair warned: "The belief I have is this: that if we do not take a stand now against the growth of this chemical, biological and nuclear weapons threat, then at some point a state or a terrorist group, pursuing extremism with no care for human life, will use such weapons, and not just Britain but the world will be plunged into a living nightmare from which we will struggle long and hard to awake.
"I know many of you find it hard to understand why I care so deeply about this. I tell you: it is fear.
"Not the fear that Saddam is about to launch a strike on a British town or city tomorrow or the next day. Not a conventional fear about a conventional threat. But the fear that one day these new threats of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states and international terrorism combine to deliver a catastrophe to our world; and the shame then of knowing that I saw that threat, day after day, and I did nothing to stop it."
Despite the widespread concern within his own party about his strategy on Iraq, Mr Blair insisted: "I cannot, and I will not, do that. No matter how hard the decision, I will try to do what I believe to be right."
History had important lessons for the current crisis, Mr Blair said. He cited the example of Neville Chamberlain's notorious efforts to appease Adolf Hitler before the second World War. Chamberlain, Mr Blair said, turned out to be "a good man who made the wrong decision".
Speaking in Madrid earlier yesterday, Mr Blair dismissed Iraq's agreement to destroy its al-Samoud 2 missiles.
"This is not a time for games," he said.
His host, the Spanish prime minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, agreed, saying President Saddam was playing "a very cruel game with the hopes for peace of millions of people in the world".
- (PA/Reuters)