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Tony Blair pays surprise visit to Baghdad
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-21 20:45
British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to
Baghdad on Tuesday, urging Iraqis to support national elections and describing
violence here as a "battle between democracy and terror."
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| British Prime Minister Tony Blair (L) talks with Hussain
al-Hindawi, head of Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission (IECI) during
a brief visit to Baghdad December 21, 2004.
[Reuters] | Blair held talks with Interim Prime
Minister Ayad Allawi and Iraqi election officials, who called heroes for
carrying out their work despite attacks by insurgents. Three members of Iraq's
election commission were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.
"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new Iraq that's
being created, because here are people who are risking their lives every day to
make sure that the people of Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny,"
Blair said during a joint news conference with Allawi.
Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq, defended the
role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to terrorism.
"If we defeat it here, we deal it a blow worldwide," he said. "If Iraq is a
stable and democratic country, that is good for the Middle East, and what is
good for the Middle East, is actually good for the world, including Britain.
Blair, whose trip to Iraq hadn't been disclosed for security reasons, urged
Iraqis to back the Jan. 30 national vote.
"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein,
and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now
very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.
The British leader said that apart from the insurgents' violence, "there is
another choice for Iraq: the choice is democracy, the choice is freedom, and our
job is to help them get there because that's what they want."
Allawi said his government was committed to holding the elections as
scheduled next month, despite calls for their postponement owing to the
violence.
"We have always expected that the violence would increase as we approach the
elections," Allawi said. "We now are on the verge, for the first time in
history, of having democracy in action in this country."
Blair said that as the U.S.-led multinational force, in which British troops
are serving, trains and improves the Iraqi security forces, "that brings forward
the day that the multinational force can leave" Iraq. The presence of foreign
troops in Iraq is strongly opposed across the Arab world.
Blair flew into the Iraqi capital about 11 a.m. aboard a British military
transport aircraft from Jordan. A Royal Air Force Puma helicopter flew from
Baghdad airport to the city center, escorted by U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.
It was Blair's first visit to Baghdad and his third to Iraq since the
dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Blair visited British troops
stationed around the southern Iraqi city of Basra in mid-2003 and in January.
President Bush had paid a late night visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad in November
2003.
The British leader was a key supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that
toppled Saddam. His decision to back the U.S. offensive angered many lawmakers
in his governing Labour Party and a large portion of the British public.
Britain has some 9,800 troops in Iraq, stationed mostly around Basra. It is
the second largest contributor to the multinational force after the United
States.
Before meeting Allawi, Blair met the commander of the multinational force,
U.S. Army Gen. George W. Casey, and the senior British military officer in Iraq,
Lt. Gen. John Kiszely.
In ongoing violence on Tuesday, a U.S. jet bombed a suspected insurgent
target in central Iraq and gunmen assassinated an Iraqi nuclear scientist north
of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were wounded when the
Humvee they were traveling in was hit by a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north
of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
The bloodshed came a day after Allawi blamed the upsurge of violence on a
campaign by insurgents to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail
legislative elections set for Jan. 30.
Allawi said the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents, blamed for Sunday's bombings
in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, want to "create ethnic and
religious tensions, problems and conflicts ... to destroy the unity of this
country."
The coordinated bombings killed 67 people and injured almost 200 in one of
the bloodiest attacks on civilians this year.
Early Tuesday, a U.S. aircraft engaged an "enemy position" with
precision-guided missiles west of Baghdad, the military said.
Hamdi Al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Hit, said four people
were killed and seven injured in the strike. He said the attack caused damage to
several cars and two buildings.
The U.S. military spokesman could not confirm the casualties.
In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified assailants
shot dead an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on his way to work, witnesses
said.
Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher, a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he
drove over a bridge on the Khrisan river. His car swerved and plummeted into the
water.
And in northern Iraq, insurgents set ablaze a major pipeline used to ship oil
to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a principal export route for Iraqi oil, an
official with the North Oil CO. said Tuesday.
Firefighters were on the scene, 70 miles southwest of Kirkuk, trying to
extinguish the fire.
Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure,
repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction
money.
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