[A-List] UK state: opposition grows

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Blair is warned of 'another Vietnam' over Gulf war threat
Clarke adds weight to Middle East critics

MICHAEL SETTLE
The Herald, 10 February 2003

TONY Blair was warned last night he would face "another Vietnam" if he
ordered thousands of British troops into a war against Iraq without
overwhelming public support.

The dire prediction from Kenneth Clarke, the former Tory chancellor, of a
bloody conflict ending in lasting recrimination and failure came as several
heavyweight political figures insisted the case for a second Gulf war still
had to be made.

Given such concerns, Mr Blair's address to Labour's spring conference in
Glasgow on Saturday is being talked up as a "make or break" speech, coming
as it does on the day when more than a million people are expected to take
part in anti-war marches in London and Glasgow and 24 hours after Hans Blix,
the chief weapons inspector, hands in his report to the UN.

It is claimed the Labour leader will raise the stakes, calling on his party
to back his hardline approach to Saddam Hussein or risk playing into the
hands of terrorists.

Following the propaganda debacle of last week when it was revealed part of
the government's dossier against Saddam had been cribbed from a student's
12-year-old college thesis, several political heavyweights yesterday spoke
out against Mr Blair's tough stance.

Mr Clarke said the prime minister would pay at the ballot box if he failed
to persuade the British public there was a proper case for war with Iraq.

He told the BBC: "It is a broad analogy to draw . . . but what destroyed
America in Vietnam was the bulk of the American public were never really
persuaded of the case for fighting in Vietnam at all."

Chris Patten, the EU's external relations commissioner, urged Mr Blair to
make inspection work, while Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland
secretary, said it would be "daft politics" to make war.

"I don't buy the moral justification. I think it's more likely to be oil,"
she told Sky TV, adding: "You don't beat terrorists by bombing them; all you
do is act as a very good recruiting agent for them."

She could be joined on Saturday's anti-war march by Charles Kennedy.

The Liberal Democrat leader claimed there was not a clear sense of the
political will between London and Washington.

He said: "The prime minister appears to be . . . saying that we can as a
country at one and the same time pursue the United Nations line - which has
been our argument as a party all along - but at the same time you have
President Bush saying the game is essentially up, time is gone, we have made
the call, and that Britain will regardless go along with the American
administration.

"Those are not consistent arguments. They are inconsistent with each other
and I think we need more clarity from the prime minister," he added.

Lord Richard, the Labour peer and Britain's former ambassador to the UN,
also appeared on the airwaves to argue Mr Blair had to secure a second
resolution, insisting the country could not go to war "on a nod and a wink".

Helen Liddell, the Scottish secretary, defended the Blair line, saying: "Our
commitment today, running up to February 14, is to keep the pressure on
Saddam Hussein to disarm. That's what this is all about. It is maintaining
the pressure on Saddam Hussein."

However, one of her parliamentary colleagues, George Galloway, the Glasgow
Kelvin MP, told Scottish TV it was a "democratic outrage" there had been no
Commons vote on sending troops to the Gulf.

He said if the prime minister were to make war, the country would "need a
new leadership and a new regime change".