Blair admits need to win back support
( 2003-09-28 10:42) (Agencies)
Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged in an interview published Sunday that he faces a significant challenge winning back public support after his decision to take Britain into the U.S.-led war against Iraq.
But Blair also told The Observer newspaper he had no intention of backing down from controversial reforms of Britain's public sector and said launching military action against Iraq had been justified.
Blair told the newspaper said he was still convinced that the intelligence on Iraq was "essentially correct," but added that some items might have been faulty.
"This wasn't an invention of British intelligence or the CIA," he was quoted as saying in the interview, conducted Saturday. "The intelligence that we got is essentially correct."
"In my experience of intelligence, not every single item is correct but if there is a pattern as strong as the pattern here, then it is," he said.
The Iraq Survey Group, the body charged with finding evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, is expected to publish its first interim report at the end of the week.
Questions about the government's handling of its case for war have plunged the Blair government into its worst crisis since it came to power in 1997. Opinion polls show a steady decline of public faith in the prime minister.
As Blair and his lawmakers prepare for the Labor Party's annual conference next week, a poll taken Sept. 11-16 and published Saturday in The Financial Times found 50 percent of those questioned said he should step aside and let someone else in the party lead the country.
A separate poll published by The Observer on Sunday reported that more than 40 percent of Labor Party members want Blair to quit before the next election and nearly 60 percent believe he was wrong to sanction military action against Iraq.
The newspapers did not give the sample size or margin of error for either poll.
Blair, who indicated that he intended to serve a third term in office, acknowledged he was making his keynote speech to the conference on Tuesday after a "difficult" year.
"I think it's a test, in a sense, for me and my leadership as to whether I can get back out and engage in a proper debate, so that these policies do no appear just to pop out of somewhere," he said.
Blair acknowledged that the government had often failed to engage the public in its policy plans.
"I've got to, I think, be far more out there engaging in a debate and dialogue with the people," he said.
Apart from Iraq, Blair faces intense opposition over plans to increase university tuition fees and inject private cash into the National Health Service, the ailing but cherished bedrock of Britain's welfare state.
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