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Bush, Blair close ranks on Iraq
Washington, July 18: US President George W Bush and visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair closed ranks early today to defend the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein and the controversial pre-war charges they used to justify it.
Washington, July 18: US President George W Bush and visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair closed ranks early today to defend the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein and the controversial pre-war charges they used to justify it.
"We won`t be proven wrong," declared Bush, who like his guest has faced mounting questions because US-led troops occupying Iraq for some three months have yet to find proof Iraq possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
"With every fiber of instinct and conviction I believe that we were right," Blair told a joint press conference after delivering an impassioned defence of the invasion in a rare address to a joint session of the US Congress.
In that speech, just the fourth by a British Prime Minister, Blair said that failure to topple Saddam in the face of evidence he consorted with terrorists and had or sought unconventional arms would have been "something history will not forgive."
The two leaders were linked over a line in Bush`s January State of the Union Address to the nation alleging that the British had learned Saddam sought uranium in Africa. Bush aides have publicly said he should not have said it.
But Blair, in a joint press conference with Bush, stood by the allegation, saying, "We know for sure" that Saddam Hussein purchased some 270 tons of nuclear material from Niger in the 1980s and had been developing a nuclear program for a decade.
Bush pointedly ducked a question about whether he took responsibility for the statement in his speech, preferring instead to "take responsibility for dealing with that threat," meaning Saddam`s now defunct regime.
Bureau Report
"With every fiber of instinct and conviction I believe that we were right," Blair told a joint press conference after delivering an impassioned defence of the invasion in a rare address to a joint session of the US Congress.
In that speech, just the fourth by a British Prime Minister, Blair said that failure to topple Saddam in the face of evidence he consorted with terrorists and had or sought unconventional arms would have been "something history will not forgive."
The two leaders were linked over a line in Bush`s January State of the Union Address to the nation alleging that the British had learned Saddam sought uranium in Africa. Bush aides have publicly said he should not have said it.
But Blair, in a joint press conference with Bush, stood by the allegation, saying, "We know for sure" that Saddam Hussein purchased some 270 tons of nuclear material from Niger in the 1980s and had been developing a nuclear program for a decade.
Bush pointedly ducked a question about whether he took responsibility for the statement in his speech, preferring instead to "take responsibility for dealing with that threat," meaning Saddam`s now defunct regime.
Bureau Report