Prime Minister Tony Blair has indicated that God influenced his deliberations when he committed British troops to fight alongside US forces in Iraq.
The remarks, which surprised some antiwar campaigners, were made in an Independent Television talk show that was to be broadcast last night.
A transcript was released by the ITV station on Friday.
Blair has made no secret of his Christian faith, but he has not previously ascribed policy decisions to his religion.
In the past, he refused to answer persistent questions by an interviewer about whether he had prayed together with President Bush.
In the interview yesterday on the widely followed Parkinson show, Blair was asked about the sending troops to Iraq, ITV said.
"That decision has to be taken and has to be lived with," he said, according to the ITV transcript, "and in the end there is a judgment that -- well, I think if you have faith about these things, then you realize that judgment is made by other people."
Asked to explain what he meant, he replied, "If you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
"This is not just a matter of a policy here or a thing there, but of their lives and in some case their death," he said. "The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing, according to your conscience, and for the rest of it you leave it to the judgment that history will make."
The Iraq war has proven unpopular with many Britons. Rose Gentle, an antiwar activist whose son Gordon died with British forces in Iraq, said: "A good Christian wouldn't be for this war. I'm actually quite disgusted by the comments. It's a joke."
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS