A British minister has warned Tony Blair against getting involved in an all-out war on Iraq, just days ahead of a special parliamentary debate on the issue.
International Development Secretary Clare Short warned Blair "we cannot have another Gulf war." "We cannot have the people of Iraq suffering again. They have suffered too much. That would be wrong," she told ITV television.
She said that the only way to tackle Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was through the United Nations.
"We have to find a way of enforcing, quite rightly, UN resolutions," she said.
"Saddam Hussein should be frightened, and the elite around him. We should frighten them.
"We should be ready to impose the will of the United Nations on them if they don't co-operate, but not by hurting the people of Iraq.
"Each one of them is as precious as the 3,000 people in the twin towers. We can't sacrifice them to putting it right.
"We have to find a way of making Saddam Hussein know he's got to obey the UN. We know that he has in the past played games with the UN enormously.
"We've got to have remedies that will hit him and the elite and not the people, and I think we need more thinking about that."
Short is the second minister to express concerns about an attack on Iraq, after the leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook, said in an interview published yesterday that any war against Iraq must have broad international support.
Parliament is recalled on Tuesday for a one-day debate on Iraq - to be preceded by the release of a dossier that Blair hopes will convince skeptical Britons of the need to take a hard line against Saddam and his reputed pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
AFP