LONDON, Jan 8: British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday warned US President George Bush to “listen back” to the international community’s fears over Iraq and other global concerns or risk “pent-up feelings of injustice and alienation” pushing mainstream world opinion into the anti-US corner.

In a major foreign policy speech, the prime minister made an ambitious bid to woo sceptics about the looming war with Iraq at the same time as he reminded Washington that global inter-dependence must work both ways if progress is not to be overwhelmed by “the common threat of chaos”.

That chaos — threatening to replace reform with “change through disorder” — could be triggered by rogue states or by terrorist acts that deliberately pit nations against each other, he predicted — a clear reference to Al Qaeda’s hopes of fomenting a clash between Islam and the west.

Affirming the bridge-building role which Britain has tried to sustain since 1945, Mr Blair then delivered a warning to the US about what might happen if chaos engulfs the “shared agenda” that has emerged since the cold war ended.

“It can come from the world splitting into rival poles of power; the US in one corner; anti-US forces in another. It can come from pent-up feelings of injustice and alienation, from divisions between the world’s richer and its poorer nations,” he said.

He cited issues of global warming, poverty, the stalled Middle East peace process, in which Britain’s initiative has been blocked by Israel, and the status of the United Nations itself as areas where the US must show that “the desire to work with others” is in its own interest too.

Aides later said that Mr Bush is also engaging in work on African development. This, Mr Blair suggested, is the way to reconcile people who “have a problem with the US, not the rabid anti-Americans, but the average middle ground”.

Mr Blair’s speech, three weeks before the UN’s deadline for progress on weapons inspection in Iraq, came as ministers unveiled diplomatic and military plans for tightening the net around President Saddam Hussein.—Dawn-Guardian News Service