LONDON: Perhaps it is all mere bravado. After all, a man who is prepared to wear a burgundy boiler suit to a dinner with a fellow head of government is not someone who is likely to be overly concerned with what other people think. Even so, for a prime minister who is said to be facing destabilising revolts within his own government and party this week, Tony Blair looked uncommonly assured at his latest Downing Street press conference on Monday. As he confidently disposed of question after question about Iraq, it rapidly became obvious that the only thing that is currently in crisis at No 10 is the prime minister’s dress sense.

Mr Blair clearly aimed to send two strong and complementary messages over Iraq. The first was a message to the regime in Baghdad. If Iraqi diplomats had been reporting a weakening of Mr Blair’s authority to carry through his policy — and if they have been reading the British press over the past week they will have had little alternative — then the prime minister was determined to disabuse them. Saddam Hussein has the illegal weapons, Mr Blair said several times, without any qualification and without citing his evidence either. If he is in breach of his obligations under United Nations resolutions, he continued, then military action against him will follow. The PM even let slip at one point that the Iraqi regime would be overthrown, not something that is often said on this side of the Atlantic. We have complete and total determination to do this, Mr Blair reiterated.

The second message was to the regime in London. Mr Blair made few concessions to the skeptics in his cabinet, his government and his party. Just about the only credible interpretation of his unremittingly confident answers is that Mr Blair must know that he has got Iraq bang to rights. Given the extent of the unhappiness and opposition across Labour at the moment, it seems obvious that Mr Blair has a card in his hand that he has not yet revealed — some egregious breach of Iraq’s obligations, presumably - which is about to be shared with the United Nations weapons inspectors. Several times on Monday, Mr Blair made clear that the inspection time frame for dealing with Iraq is not a problem for him. The inference from that must be that the prime minister senses that, when the time comes, the proof will be there, the doubters will be persuaded, the polls will turn his way and the security council will give the green light. Either that, or Mr Blair is even more of a master of deception than his critics believe.

But Mr Blair he should mightily beware of overconfidence.

At times on Monday, he seemed close to saying that he believed the case was so compelling that it might be possible to go ahead with military action to disarm Iraq without recourse to a second UN resolution. The message there may have been intended primarily for Russia. Yet Mr Blair should know that the need for an explicit second resolution has become one of the totemic issues among skeptics at home. To act without a second resolution would be to hand the United States military a freedom to act which the doubters are not prepared to give it. Such an action would rightly inflame opinion at home. If Mr Blair wants to retain any credibility on Iraq he must not try to dodge this serious obligation.

Yet it is one thing to display lots of confidence and command. It is another to be able to get your way. Mr Blair should not underestimate the immense misgiving with which his party and the country are riddled over Iraq.

He talked airily at one point in the press conference of how these doubts seem to fester during the holiday periods, as they did last summer and again over the Christmas period, and how he has to come along and clear things up once the political calendar resumes. But this is a cheap way of putting it. The truth is that last summer’s doubts were only deferred because the Americans finally decided to go to the security council. The current phase may likewise be deferred because the inspection process may take longer than the Pentagon wants. But in the end this only postpones the crunch issue of whether the public and MPs are prepared to back military action which will be controlled and conducted overwhelmingly by the United States. Mr Blair should not assume that the skeptics will come meekly and obediently into line, even if the security council passes a second resolution. Whatever else one can say about the way the Iraq crisis plays out, it is unlikely to get any easier, either on the international stage or on the home front. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.