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WILD-EYED Tony Blair
warned yesterday that he was ready to wage war on the world.
The Prime Minister told
jeering Labour MPs his next target after Iraq was North Korea and
the fight would go on until the world was a safer place.
Anti-war MPs heckled Mr
Blair during Commons question time as he desperately tried to
justify military action on Saddam Hussein.
They shouted "who's
next?" and "when do we stop?" in one of the most
open shows of defiance since the crisis erupted.
A finger-jabbing Mr Blair
turned on them: "After we deal with Iraq we do, yes, through
the United Nations have to confront North Korea about its weapons
programme.
"We have to confront
those companies and individuals trading in weapons of mass
destruction.
"We stop when the
threat to our security is properly and fully dealt with."
Labour MPs are growing
increasingly restless about the full-scale rush to war.
Left-winger Lynne Jones
accused the PM of only identifying Iraq as a threat after George
Bush grouped it with Iran and Kim Jong Il's regime in North Korea
as an "axis of evil".
The Premier snapped:
"Precisely because he was a threat there have been thousands
of British forces down in the Gulf the whole time flying over the
no-fly zones.
"Precisely because
he was a threat, we have had to impose a sanctions regime on Iraq.
"Way before the axis
of evil speech, at the very first meeting I had with President
Bush back in February 2001 I said that weapons of mass destruction
is an issue and we have to confront them."
Cabinet minister Clare
Short renewed her warning that military action must have full UN
backing.
"We should all be
clear that we unite behind the UN, and it's invincibly strong this
time, and that Saddam Hussein knows that we're not going away and
he can't push the inspectors back and stop them operating like he
did before," she said on BBC radio. "And then we can
minimise the risks of war, but we have to be willing, if
necessary, to take some military action to back up the authority
of the UN.
"We should deal with
it in a way that minimises any risk of further suffering to the
people of Iraq."
The Commons bust-up
followed a day of Government confusion over alleged links between
Iraq and al-Qaeda.
President Bush said in
his State of the Union speech that intelligence reports had shown
extensive co-operation between the two.
Downing Street yesterday
initially claimed Iraq was "sheltering" al-Qaeda
operatives. But at Question Time, the PM appeared to row back. He
said: "We do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. We
cannot be sure of the exact extent of those links."
The Foreign Office added:
"It would be hard to imagine that this was happening without
the knowledge and acquiescence of the regime."
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