British Prime Minister Tony Blair was back in London yesterday, looking fit and tanned after a Red Sea holiday and a snap visit to Iraq, ready to plow into one of his toughest months since he took office.
Blair ended a 10-day family New Year's holiday at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday with an unannounced six-hour visit to southern Iraq, his second since the US-led invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein.
There he mingled with some of the 10,000 British troops occupying the oil-rich desert region, saluting them as "the new pioneers of soldiers in the 21st century."
PHOTO: AFP
"Iraq today is taking shape under your help and with your guidance in a way that would have been unthinkable a year ago," the blue-blazered prime minister told several hundred soldiers in berets and desert camouflage fatigues.
Back in London, however, Blair faces two big hurdles in the coming weeks.
One is strictly domestic: legislation that would, in effect, raise university tuition fees -- no minor concern for middle-class British families -- as much as threefold.
Blair, who regards the proposal as a key part of his overall reform program, has indicated that he will stake his future on its success, amid signs of a rebellion among backbench members of his own Labour party.
The other has an Iraq twist: the much-awaited report of a judicial inquiry into the July suicide of David Kelly, a Ministry of Defense weapons expert and former UN arms inspector.
Kelly was exposed by Blair's government as the source of a BBC report two months earlier alleging that key intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction had been "sexed up" in the run-up to war.
If Lord Hutton, the senior judge who conducted hearings in August and September, comes down hard on Downing Street, it will give fresh ammunition to Blair's critics who are already tut-tutting the failure of US and British forces to find hard proof that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction.
During his visit Sunday to Basra, Iraq's second city, where British troops are headquartered, Blair preferred to dwell on the need to see through the reconstruction of Iraq into a keystone of democracy in the Middle East.
Unlike central and northern Iraq, where US forces have been under almost daily insurgent attack, the south has been relatively calm, with officials reporting fewer and fewer incidents.
Fifty-four British troops have died in Iraq since the March 20 invasion, the last in November -- in a traffic accident. By comparison, US forces have suffered more than 200 fatal casualties.
On his flight home, Blair -- who last visited Basra on May 29, the day of the BBC report -- said the focus now is on the proposed mid-year handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi governing council, ahead of elections next year.
"It's important to realize that we are about to enter into a very critical six months," he told journalists.
"We have got to get on top of the security situation properly, and we have got to manage the transition," he said. "Both of those things are going to be difficult."
He added: "It's very important to show the people of Iraq that we are not walking away."
Besides mingling with the troops, Blair met Sunday with Paul Bremer, the US civil administrator for Iraq, and the governor of Basra, Wael Adullatif -- practically the only Iraqi he had time for during his six-hour visit.
He also spent 15 minutes inspecting a former prison camp, southwest of Basra, where British, Italian and Danish police officers will be retraining 6,000 Iraqi police officers over the next six months.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS