Saddam weapons are 'a very real threat to Britain', warns Tony Blair (ALLIANCE UPDATE)

Tony Blair warned last night that Saddam Hussein was a "very real threat to Britain", as he agreed a detailed countdown to military action against Iraq with President Bush at their Camp David summit.

In a clear attempt to build support at home for war, Mr Blair said for the first time that Saddam could target Britain if he was allowed to continue obtaining long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"The threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain," he said.

"If these weapons are developed and used there is no way that any conflict Saddam initiated using these weapons would not have direct implications for the interests of Britain."

At a joint press conference with Mr Blair, President Bush said: "A report came out of the International Atomic Energy Agency that they [the Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

The Prime Minister said it showed there was a "real issue that had to be tackled - the policy of inaction is not one we can responsibly adhere to".

Mr Bush said: "It threatens the US. It threatens Britain. The battlefield has changed. We are in a new kind of war."

Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's National Security Adviser, said before the summit the next target for attack "wouldn't have to be New York or Washington. It could be London or Berlin".

However, President Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhard Schroder, the chancellor of Germany, meeting in Hanover last night, said they would oppose unilateral action against Iraq by the US.

We expected such cowardice from the Frogs and Krauts; it doesn't make it any less base. - Ivan

Mr Blair and Mr Bush used their summit to thrash out a comprehensive strategy for tackling the Iraqi regime, while continuing to build international support. They intend to give Saddam a strict new deadline to dismantle all his weapons of mass destruction, or face the military overthrow of his regime.

Mr Bush will use his speech at the United Nations this Thursday - the day after the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - to set out the case for the UN to issue a rigid timetable that Saddam will be required to adhere to.

It is likely to allow four weeks for Baghdad to re-admit UN inspection teams, with six months to a year to dismantle all weapons.

It will be linked to a "one strike and you're out" clause, which will sanction an immediate and massive use of force at the first sign of deception or delaying tactics by the Iraqi regime.

As part of the strategy, American and British forces will be sent to the region and stationed around Iraq in preparation for an attack.

A US State Department official said: "The minute Saddam blinks and Iraqis say that the inspectors can't go to a palace or that they have to wait because Saddam is there and he needs time to leave, that's it. The clock will stop and Iraq will be in breach of a resolution with all that that implies."

US officials said Mr Bush may call on Mr Blair to present a draft resolution to the UN security council detailing the new deadline, so as to win the widest diplomatic support and to avoid the charge that America is acting unilaterally.

The State Department official said: "The goal is to make clear that this is the last chance. He can't fudge or 'cheat and retreat' again and get away with it. He will pay the heaviest price if he does."

Mr Blair and Mr Bush remain sceptical that the return of weapons inspectors and the new deadline will be accepted by Saddam, but believe the initiative will help build the broadest possible international support.

It's to show we're being "reasonable", Saddam can't be trusted, so out he goes - Ivan

Speaking on the plane to Camp David, Mr Blair said: "We have got to see this in the light of experience. Why did the inspectors go? It was because the inspectors found they couldn't do their work. Whatever weapons inspection regime is put in has to be one that's very effective."

A dossier detailing the nuclear threat posed by Saddam is expected to be published within two weeks. Mr Blair, who was due at Balmoral to meet the Queen today after flying back to Britain in the early hours of the morning, is resisting the recall of Parliament but will brief the key Commons select committees on defence and foreign affairs this week.

A senior Government official said the dossier would give details for the first time of the efforts made by Saddam to obtain nuclear weapons and to increase the range of the missiles to deliver them.

"What is new in the dossier," said the official, "is that despite the Gulf War, despite the policy of containment, he is continuing to try to develop these weapons and the judgment you have to make is whether people take that threat - and he has shown he will use them - sufficiently seriously to take action now."

Much of the dossier, which is described as "quite a big document", will cover old ground. The official admitted that there were "huge gaps" in intelligence because weapons inspectors had been kept out of Iraq for four years. But he said that there was new, "highly suspicious" evidence showing new building work at Iraqi nuclear plants.

That is unlikely to be enough to convince the sceptics among Mr Blair's Labour MPs. Their opposition to military action was reinforced by remarks yesterday by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, that it could take Saddam another decade to obtain nuclear weapons.

Mr Blair is to go to Moscow around October 10 - at the same time as the Conservative Party conference - to secure the support of President Putin for the threat of action against Iraq.

In spite of warnings by Mr Putin in their telephone conversation on Friday that an attack would be illegal, the Russians have given clear hints they can be won over to avoid casting a veto in the UN security council.

Mr Blair was told by Mikhail Kasyanov, the Russian prime minister, at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg last week that in return for its support Russia wanted guarantees about the $10 billion it is owed by Iraq for past trade deals.

It's good to have Blair's support, at no small political cost to himself.

Still, I don't like this plan. We won't have more support for attacking after we send in inspectors. We'll have less.

That's even if Hussein starts d*cking around again with inspections. If he does that, whatever obstruction he undertakes on any one particular occasion will not seem so significant by itself. And the U.S. will be asked, by an increasingly emboldened international community, why it must attack after that particular little violation when it has already conceded that inspections could be made to work without attacking? It will have put inspectors into Iraq, after all, with Hussein still in power. So why can't it just force the inspections a little more rather than attack Hussein?

That's what we'll be asked. What will we say?

If it's going to be worth invading in six months because Sadaam is ten minutes late for an appointment, then I see no point in playing games now. The stakes are too high. Our international support, such as it is, will only get weaker as time goes by, not stronger.

If Hussein has a cell in his brain he'll accept the inspections proposals, let them work a while until the world gets tired of hearing about it, then start jerking the West around again. Then Bush will have a very hard time working everyone up for an attack again.

Now, this may all be moot. Hussein might just be stupid enough to refuse to permit inspectors back in. But I don't see why Bush is going to count on this.

Thanks, Ivan!

Mr Blair was told by Mikhail Kasyanov, the Russian prime minister, at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg last week that in return for its support Russia wanted guarantees about the $10 billion it is owed by Iraq for past trade deals.

So how many former Iraqi/? oil wells and barrels of oil do we have to promise to the Russians to get them on our side.

Sounds like for about 20 billion, they could be persuaded join us in the upcoming, KICK SADDAM'S A$$ AND TAKE HIS GAS! adventure.

If so that would be a good investment.

DL, I think that you are right on target here.

As I have been telling Ivan, the UK code crackers are among the best in the world and their other intel gathers are very good.

I think that they had the goods on Sammy Ben Ladden, The Talibunnies and the Al Qaeda goat humpers before 9/11. They couldn't get Tony to listen to them. Clintoon refused to meet with James Woolsey to hear what James had to say about the Islamakazi Terrorists, their financing and what could happen as a result.

Then after 9/11 they showed what they had to Tony and how eventually London and the UK would become targets of al Qaeda. The data scared the hell out of Tony. He took that data to GW, and the pieces of the puzzle palaces fell into place. This data is why GW asked James Woolsey to go to London. He was not there just to talk to people to overthrown Saddam.

Now, they have even scarier data on Saddam and his WMDs.

London and the rest of the UK are a lot easier to get to than the US. This data shows that France and Germany have been in bed with Saddam for about 2 decades re helping him with tech help and actual hardware help to make WMD's.

Tony knows that if Saddam is not taken out, he will not have much of a country to be PM of.

Tony Blair warned last night that Saddam Hussein was a "very real threat to Britain",

HA! Then why won't he share his "dossier" on Saddam? He promised on his last visit to bring the smoking gun dossier, but FT reported at the time that it was not complete and would be forwarded later. Later, the press reported that there would be no Iraq dossier forwarded by Blair. If one existed -- and was promised -- where is it? Simple question that all the contorting etc never answers. If they got the goods, and have promised to show us months and months ago, where is it?

Answer? They're lying.

And your singing Blair's praises is a new low in your otherwise low kissing-up-to-US career. What a laugh!

Every time you post on my threads you get exposed as a pompous liar - why do you bother?

Blair hasn't published the dossier yet. It is interesting however that you automatically assume your intelligence is better than President Bush, Tony Blair's...and rather, you like the French view of the situation.

But then again, everyone but you is stupid, right? That sounds like a French point of view to me.

Ivan

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