Russian President embarrasses Blair with war snub

MOSCOW - British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin failed to resolve their deep differences over Iraq yesterday as the Russian President openly mocked the failure of the United States and Britain to find Saddam Hussein or his weapons of mass destruction.

In an extraordinary snub to Blair, Putin told a joint press conference near Moscow that Russia would not bow to US and British demands for the early lifting of sanctions against Iraq until there was evidence that Iraq possessed the weapons the coalition used to justify the war.

Blair was left embarrassed as Putin said with heavy irony: "Where is Saddam? Where are these arsenals - if they were really there?

"Maybe he is sitting somewhere in a secret bunker with plans to blow all this stuff up at the last minute, threatening hundreds of human lives."

The Russian President added: "Sanctions can only be removed if there is no suspicion and it is only the [United Nations] Security Council that can remove these sanctions because it imposed them in the first place."

Blair had hoped to use his day trip to Russia to rebuild relations with Putin but left without securing support for a UN resolution on the lifting of sanctions - a move which Russia has the power to veto.

The visit was a big setback to the Prime Minister's drive to reunite the fractured international community after the war.

Russia gave a clear signal that it would maintain the alliance it forged with France and Germany over Iraq rather than gravitate towards the US and Britain.

Yesterday Germany and France launched a military initiative without inviting Britain to their summit.

However, analysts said a mini-summit in Brussels of Iraq-war opponents appeared to have had more bluster than substance.

Britain, Spain, Italy and other European countries that supported the war were not invited.

In the end, the post-summit statement by the Brussels four - Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg - watered down a Belgian proposal to set up a rapid reaction force headquarters that would be entirely free from links to Nato.

Britain backs a European rapid reaction force that would give the European Union the capability to respond to security threats on its own if the United States is reluctant to intervene.

It wants to see other countries, Germany especially, modernise their militaries and halt a decline in defence spending.

But London strongly opposes any move that would decouple the command of a European force from Nato.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq