Writing in the UK's Observer newspaper, he accused the former leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq military campaign had made the world more unstable "than any other conflict in history", he said. Mr Blair responded by saying "this is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say". Earlier this week, Archbishop Tutu, a veteran peace campaigner who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his campaign against apartheid, pulled out of a leadership summit in Johannesburg because he refused to share a platform with Mr Blair... ...In response to Sunday's article, Mr Blair issued a strongly worded defence of his decisions. He said: "To repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence [on weapons of mass destruction] is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown. "And to say that the fact that Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre. "We have just had the memorials both of the Halabja massacre, where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam's use of chemical weapons, and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million, including many killed by chemical weapons. "In addition, his slaughter of his political opponents, the treatment of the Marsh Arabs and the systematic torture of his people make the case for removing him morally strong. But the basis of action was as stated at the time." |
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