Iraq was a "test case" of the international community's ability to tackle the dual problems of terrorism and repression, British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair said yesterday in an apparent message to other so-called "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran.
In a surprise whistle-stop visit to the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Mr Blair thanked British troops for their part in toppling Saddam Hussein and told them they had fought in "a noble and good cause".
He renewed warnings that states that develop weapons of mass destruction were "a huge, huge liability for the whole security of the world" .
Speaking just days ahead of the expected publication of the Hutton report into the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly, which is expected to raise questions about the decision to go to war, Mr Blair repeated his "passionate" belief in the rightness of his cause.
"The conflict here was a conflict of enormous importance because Iraq was a test case," he said.
"Iraq was a country whose regime had a proven record of the use of weapons of mass destruction - not just their development - and a regime so abhorrent that... literally hundreds of thousands of its citizens died in prison camps and torture and repression.
"If we had backed away from that, we would never have been able to confront this threat in the other countries where it exists."
Mr Blair toured a British-run academy for recruits to the Iraqi police force in the small town of Az Zubayr before addressing troops at the Shaibah logistics base near Iraq's second city of Basra.
Meanwhile, Mr Blair's envoy to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned that anti-American insurgency in the country was getting more sophisticated.
Four days after a 500lb car-bomb killed eight people at a Baghdad restaurant, Sir Jeremy said even bigger explosions could be expected in the future.
"The opposition is getting more sophisticated, using bigger bombs and more sophisticated controls. We will go on seeing bigger bangs," he said.
Mr Blair was due to have brief talks with King Abdullah of Jordan before continuing his journey home to London on board a chartered jet.
Meanwhile, US troops raided the offices of Kurdish parties in the oil-rich city Kirkuk, where six people died in ethnic clashes last week, and seized AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said yesterday. A senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party was taken into custody after the on Saturday night raids. - (PA, Reuters)