Mr Tony Blair denied civilians were being targeted during the military campaign in Afghanistan yesterday as Britain appealed to coalition partners to release promised financial help for the humanitarian programme.
During Prime Minister's Question Time in the Commons, Mr Blair assured MPs the coalition was "doing everything we can to minimise" civilian casualties, unlike Osama bin Laden and his followers.
Mr Blair disagreed with the Labour MP, Mr Jeremy Corbyn, that the use of cluster bombs seemed to be targeted in part at conscripted soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan and that a pause in the bombing would improve the flow of humanitarian aid into the country.
Mr Corbyn said the use of cluster bombs was forcing large numbers of people to flee Afghanistan into Pakistan and unless there was a pause in the bombing the military action would bring "more death and more destruction" and "devastation and poverty" to civilians.
Drawing attention to a recent report by the World Food Programme, Mr Blair said it was not the bombing campaign that prevented aid getting through but the "harrying" activities of the Taliban.
Mr Blair insisted: "There are no civilian targets at all. We do everything we can, unlike bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network who set out to kill as many civilians as they could, we do everything we can to minimise the civilian casualties."
There was a "simple choice", Mr Blair told the Commons.
"We either decide after an atrocity like September 11th that we are going to act against those responsible, against those sheltering those responsible, or we don't," he said.
However, mindful of the unease among many of his backbenchers about the bombing campaign, Mr Blair told Mr Corbyn: "I respect entirely your right to disagree with the course that we are taking but I believe that course to be right."
The International Development Secretary, Ms Clare Short, told the Commons that of $700 million pledged by coalition partners, only $70 million had been received so far.
Ms Short, who described the humanitarian situation within Afghanistan as "fragile", said unless the pledges were released soon the humanitarian aid programme would be "hampered".
Earlier, Mr Blair conceded there were "real criticisms" of the West's actions in Afghanistan 12 years ago when freedom fighters were given funds but when they took power "the situation was even worse".
He told GMTV the coalition would "learn from some of the mistakes of the past" and would not desert Afghanistan after the current action.