Tony Blair rejects any comparison between Iraq and Ukraine
“There is no reasonable justification for invading an independent and sovereign country with a democratic President, [qui ne posait] no one’s problem” and “did not violate any international obligation,” Mr Blair said. (Photo by Daniel LEAL / AFP) DANIEL LEAL / AFP
Twenty years ago, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair dragged the UK behind the US to the war in Iraq, a decision that sparked widespread protests in his country. Today he refuses to make any comparison between the war in Iraq and Ukraine, which was waged without a UN mandate, even if Russian President Vladimir Putin used it as a “pretext”.
“There is no reasonable justification for invading an independent and sovereign country with a democratic President, [qui ne posait] no problem for anyone” and violated “no international obligation”, explains Mr Blair in an interview with Agence France-Presse and the European press agencies ANSA, DPA and EFE. “If he hadn’t used that excuse [de l’Irak]he would have used someone else,” said Vladimir Putin’s former Labor leader, 69.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein provoked two regional wars, defied several UN resolutions and launched a chemical weapons attack on his own people, Blair recalls. “At least we can see that we have removed a despot from power [en Irak] trying to install democracy,” he defends from the offices of his Institute for Global Change in central London. “Of course we can discuss all the consequences” of the Iraq war, he concedes.
But “we must never forget what Vladimir Putin did in the Middle East, in Syria. (…) His intervention in the Middle East served to keep a despot in power and to reject democracy. So we should treat all this propaganda with the little respect it deserves,” adds Blair.
Mr Putin is now the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for the war crime of “illegally deporting” Ukrainian children following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a decision Moscow says has no legal value.