Gordon Brown today acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the handling of Iraq following the 2003 war, and did not rule out a future inquiry into what went wrong.
Speaking on BBC1's Sunday AM, the Chancellor condemned the manner in which former dictator Saddam Hussein was put to death as "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable".
And he said that, in the war on terror, more emphasis should be placed on the battle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world, rather than the military action which has dominated the joint US and UK response to September 11.
Mr Brown gave a strong hint that he would not support any increase in British troop numbers in Iraq if President George Bush announces a "surge" of as many as 20,000 US soldiers as expected next week.
UK personnel in the south of Iraq should continue their move away from combat and towards greater involvement in reconstruction operations and thousands of them can be expected to have left the country by the end of this year, he said.
Mr Brown's denunciation of Saddam's hanging puts additional pressure on Mr Blair, who has faced criticism — including from Labour MPs — for failing to make any public comment on the December 30 execution. The PM has said he will make his views known in the coming week.
Asked about the execution, the Chancellor told interviewer Andrew Marr: "Now that we know the full picture of what happened, we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events.
"It is something, of course, which the Iraqi Government has now expressed its anxiety and shame at.
"It has done nothing to lessen tensions between the Shia and Sunni communities.
"Even those people, unlike me, who are in favour of capital punishment found this completely unacceptable and I am pleased that there is now an inquiry into this and I hope lessons in this area will be learnt, as we learn other lessons about what has happened in Iraq."
Mr Brown's condemnation echoed the comments of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who last week described the filming of Saddam's last moments as "deplorable" and said those responsible should be "ashamed".
Mr Marr asked Mr Brown whether he would commission an inquiry into the post-war handling of Iraq if he becomes Prime Minister as expected later this year.
He replied: "There will always be reviews into what happened. The lessons we have got to learn are two-fold.
"One is that in Iraq itself there is absolutely no doubt — and I think people will agree on this in time — that the passage of authority to the local population should have begun a lot earlier, so they had to take more responsibility for what was happening in their own country.
"I think, more generally, as far as the war on terror is concerned, the lesson I learned — and I think this is going to be of huge significance in the years to come — is that by military action and policing and intelligence and security work you can achieve a great deal, but we will not win against extreme terrorist activities and propaganda activities unless we have this battle for hearts and minds as well.
PA