March 26, 2007	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 6, 1428

LONDON, March 25: Britain should formally apologise for its role in the slave trade, a senior Anglican cleric said in an interview broadcast on Sunday, 200 years to the day since the practice was banned.

The Church of England’s first black archbishop, Archbishop of York John Sentamu, told the BBC that although Blair had recently called the slave trade “entirely unacceptable,” he should go further and issue a full apology.His comments came ahead of a ceremony in Ghana, where Britain's first black female cabinet minister, Baroness Valerie Amos, was to say that slavery was “one of the most shameful and uncomfortable chapters in British history.” Blair, in Berlin for the European Union's 50th anniversary celebrations, was due to address the event in Ghana by video link.

The Church of England itself had slaves on plantations in the Caribbean and made a formal apology last year.

Asked in the interview whether the British government should do the same, Uganda-born Sentamu, who is the Church of England's second most senior cleric, said: “Yes, I think this should happen.

“Britain is our community and this community was involved in a very, very terrible trade.

“Africa as a community was involved in a very terrible trade, the Church as a community was involved in a terrible trade. It is really important that we own up to what was collectively done.” He added: “This is really the moment in which you say, ‘By the way, I think our forebearers did a terrible, terrible thing’. I think he (Blair) should go a bit further.” Blair has faced repeated calls to make a full apology in the run-up to the anniversary of the ban on the trade in black slaves throughout the British empire, which was marked on Saturday in London with a commemorative march.—AFP