LONDON: British prime minister Tony Blair on Thursday night faced an internal party revolt over Iraq as union leaders prepared to table emergency anti-war resolutions at this autumn’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Labour party conferences and moves were made to seek a special meeting of the party’s national executive committee (NEC).
An influential group of union leaders are planning to use their votes in September to put the TUC in the opposition camp and ensure the issue is debated at the Labour conference in October.
The prospect of the TUC coming out against an attack on Iraq is potentially embarrassing for Mr Blair, due to speak at the congress on September 10, and unless the big union battalions buckle he could face an even more embarrassing reverse a month later.
Tam Dalyell, the prominent anti-war Labour MP (Member of Parliament), said: “I understand that emergency motions are flooding in from constituency parties, most of them stressing that parliament must be consulted and that we do not have the right to do anything other than through a new UN resolution.”
At least three prominent cabinet ministers — Gordon Brown, Robin Cook and Clare Short — are thought to harbour doubts about Britain backing George Bush should the US launch an assault on Saddam Hussein.
Union leaders effectively control Labour’s conference arrangements committee and can decide which four or five “contemporary” motions are debated. The leaders of most of the big unions oppose British participation in any invasion.
Mark Seddon, editor of the leftwing weekly Tribune, initiated the moves to recall Labour’s NEC to discuss a proposed anti-war resolution by emailing colleagues. Under Labour rules, 50 per cent of NEC members — 16 of the 32 — can force a meeting to be held.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
Agencies add: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Saturday that they hope to see a political solution in Iraq, the Kremlin’s press department said, as the United States continues to mull military intervention to overthrow the regime in Baghdad.
“The two countries have a similar position concerning the need to find a political solution to the Iraqi problem,” the press service said after the two leaders held telephone talks.
US President George W. Bush has pledged to oust Saddam Hussein whom he accuses of developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
But Russia is adamantly opposed to military strikes on Iraq and has long been pressing for a diplomatic solution to return weapons inspectors to Baghdad in exchange for a lifting of UN sanctions.
The United Nations imposed sanctions against Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and UN weapons inspectors left the country in December 1998 on the eve of the last massive US-British air strikes on Baghdad.
Putin and Berlusconi also discussed two bilateral trade deals hammered out on the sidelines of a Russo-Italian summit in April, the press agency said.
One deal involved satellite telecommunications and the other Italy’s import of Russia’s all-terrain UAZ vehicles.
The telephone talks came as Putin’s two daughters — Masha, 18, and Katya, 17 — were vacationing in Sardinia with Berlusconi’s eldest daughter Barbara.
FRENCH POLL: An overwhelming majority of French people would oppose their country’s involvement in UN-sanctioned military strikes against Iraq, a new poll to be published Sunday found.
Some 75 percent of those interviewed by the IFOP Institute said they were opposed to military action, even if the United Nations Security Council voted a go-ahead, the Journal du Dimanche reports.