The Hindu : Blair faces political crisis

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 10, 2003

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Blair faces political crisis

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON MARCH 9. In the first sign of an impending political revolt against the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, over his Iraq policy, a member of his Government resigned today even as four others threatened to follow suit if he supported a United States-led attack on Iraq without a second U.N. resolution.

Andy Reed, MP and ministerial aide to the Secretary of State for Environment, Margaret Beckett, announced his resignation through a statement on his website and said he would give his full reasons on Monday. Earlier, he had told newspapers that he would quit "if we don't have a second resolution".

Similar threats came from four other junior members of the Government even as speculation continued to swirl around two Cabinet Ministers — Robin Cook and Clare Short — who were also believed to be similarly inclined. The anti-war sentiment in the Labour Party hardened after the latest British-U.S. ultimatum to Iraq with the dissidents claiming that up to 200 MPs may join an anti-Blair revolt if there was no U.N. authorisation for military action.

Embarrassed Blair loyalists were today doing the rounds of TV studios to assure critics that every effort was being made to secure a second resolution. Mr. Blair, spending the weekend at Chequers, was reportedly engaged in intensive "phone diplomacy" to persuade the Security Council fence sitters such as Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Chile to come on board.

The Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, one of whose own junior Ministers had threatened to resign on the issue, told Sky TV that the Government was going "flat out" to secure a second resolution. Her remarks came amid reports of fresh behind-the-scenes attempts to force the Iraq President, Saddam Hussein, to go into exile to avert a war.

The Sunday Telegraph quoted a diplomat as saying that the idea behind the March 17 deadline was to "raise the pressure to the highest degree on Saddam and concentrate the minds of others who may want to make a final attempt to persuade him into exile".

The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, sought to play down the reports of threatened ministerial resignations saying: "You have got to put it into its context".

He insisted that the party was solidly behind Mr. Blair — a claim sharply contested by other Labour figures who said that the Prime Minister was facing "enormous" difficulties. Douglas Henderson, a former Armed Forces Minister in the Blair Government, warned that the party was going through "one of the most critical periods".

Anti-war protests

Anti-war protests were held across Britain on Saturday while a new opinion poll today showed that only 15 per cent of the people supported unilateral military action. Seventy-seven per cent said they would oppose a war which did not have a U.N. mandate.

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