BRITAIN: Mr Tony Blair confronted the question of trust head-on yesterday with a speech to the British Labour Party's annual conference in Brighton in which he acknowledged his fallibility, but resolutely refused to apologise for the war in Iraq.
And like Chancellor Gordon Brown 24 hours earlier, Mr Blair confirmed the acute sensitivity of the conference to the international situation as he began his speech with the offer of prayers and thoughts for the British hostage Mr Ken Bigley and his family.
In a low-key performance interrupted by anti-war and anti-hunt protesters who managed to thwart unprecedented security at the conference centre, Mr Blair put his party on an election-footing with a third term promise to "break the glass ceiling on opportunity in Britain."
With Mr Brown and Mr Alan Milburn, recently reappointed to the Cabinet, battling for control of Labour's general election campaign, Mr Blair signalled his desire for manifesto commitments to further radical reform in Britain's public services. He claimed choice as a Labour, rather than a Tory policy, proclaiming: "It is New Labour that now wears the one nation mantle."
However, the divided state of Britain was on display outside as well as inside as thousands of Countryside Alliance protesters vented their wrath at the proposed ban on fox hunting and hare coursing. And before tomorrow's potentially embarrassing debate on the war, to be accompanied by another large anti-war protest, he sought to heal his own party's divisions over the conduct of Labour's foreign policy in alliance with President Bush.
Rehearsing Labour's past achievements, and listing 10 things a third term Labour government would do, Mr Blair said: "Of course every change will be hard - change always is; every time we act on the reality of the future, people will accuse us reneging on the values of the past." But he ventured: "On the issues we have discussed, the normal run of politics, you feel, and the country feels, reasonably confident."
Then he confronted his critics and turned the spotlight back on his leadership with the rhetorical question: "The problem of trust isn't primarily about that, is it?"
Acknowledging that it was rather about the decisions he had taken in the name of Britain's security since September 11th, 2001, Mr Blair said there had been suggestions pre-conference that he had wanted to put aside discussion of Iraq. "That was never my intention. I want to deal with it head on."
He introduced the word "apology" while stopping short of actually offering one. "The evidence about Saddam (Hussein) having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong. I acknowledge that and I accept it."
As delegates applauded, Mr Blair continued: "I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries. And the problem is I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam. The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."
He said he knew the war had divided the country: "I know too that as people see me struggling with it, they think he's stopped caring about us; or worse, he's just pandering to George Bush and, what's more, in a cause that's irrelevant to us."
Mr Blair raised a laugh when he quoted one delegate telling him: "I've defended you so well to everyone I've almost convinced myself." Then he shared with conference the burden of his leadership. "Do I know I'm right? Judgments aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being as fallible and as capable of being wrong.
"I only know what I believe. One view is that there are isolated individuals, extremists, engaged in essentially isolated acts of terrorism. That what is happening is not qualitatively different from the terrorism we have always lived with. And if you believe this, we carry on the same path as before September 11th. We try not to provoke them and hope in time they wither."
The other view, he said, is that "this is a wholly new phenomenon, worldwide global terrorism, based on a perversion of the true, peaceful and honourable faith of Islam."
Urging his party to put aside its past differences and "stand by the people of Iraq until the job is done" Mr Blair said: "It's not that I care more about foreign affairs than the state of our economy, NHS, schools or crime. It's simply that I believe democracy there (in Iraq) means security here (in Britain); and that if I don't care and act on this terrorist threat, then the day will come when all our good work on the issues that decide people's lives will be undone because the stability on which our economy, in an era of globalisation, depends, will vanish."