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Brown says PM was right to go to war against Iraq

Marie Woolf,Chief Political Correspondent
Wednesday 23 July 2003 00:00 BST
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Gordon Brown gave his backing to Tony Blair yesterday over the war in Iraq and said the Prime Minister was right to launch a strike against Saddam Hussein.

The Chancellor, who has kept a low public profile during the war and its aftermath, offered his support for Britain's stance in a speech to senior American policy makers in New York. He said: "Britain and the US were right to take military action against Saddam Hussein.

"We should not forget that Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, and that resolution 1441, which listed the weapons of mass destruction believed to be in Iraq, as agreed unanimously by the UN Security Council, made clear that compliance this time had to be full, unconditional and immediate."

His intervention follows a series of articles in the New Statesman by his allies attacking the Prime Minister over Iraq and portraying him as "a psychopath" and "psychotic". The left-wing magazine, which is owned by Geoffrey Robinson, a former Treasury minister and an ally of Mr Brown, argued that the Chancellor should take over as Prime Minister in 2005.

The articles said he would be a "bigger vote winner than Blair". One asked "What is the point of Tony Blair?" while another said "the question of Tony Blair's sanity can no longer be avoided".

The magazine claimed that the date Mr Brown would take over as leader could prove to be the "radical watershed of our age".

The magazine said that "Mr Brown, like Margaret Thatcher but unlike Mr Blair, has a focus. Mr Blair lacks such clarity of purpose, with the result that all sorts of fancy ideas get an airing, without rhyme or reason and usually without result".

Some Brown aides are embarrassed by the assertions in the New Statesman, and have tried to distance the Chancellor from them.

The Chancellor's comments in New York last night are likely to be interpreted at Westminster as an attempt to repair the damage caused by the articles.

Mr Brown backed military action against Saddam but was not among those ministers who tried to convince the public that it was a just war. He did not seek to defend the Government over the "dodgy dossier" and kept out of the ensuing row over claims that Downing Street "sexed up" intelligence reports. He has also stayed out of the David Kelly affair and the battle between Downing Street and the BBC.

The Chancellor set aside a £3bn war chest to pay for the strike against Iraq.

The bill for invading and occupying Iraq is expected to come to more than £5bn and the extra cash is likely to come out of Treasury reserves.

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