Iraq invasion was \’right decision\’: British PM
By IANSThursday, March 4, 2010
LONDON - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Friday defended Britain\’s 2003 invasion of Iraq as the \”right decision\” but admitted the invading forces\’ failure to win peace more quickly.
\”It was the right decision and it was for the right reasons,\” Brown told an inquiry headed by former civil servant Sir John Chilcot here.
Brown, who was finance minister in Tony Blair\’s cabinet at the time, described the decision to invade Iraq as \”the gravest decision of all\” - taken because Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had consistently flouted international law.
\”We cannot have an international community that works if we have either terrorists who are breaking these rules or aggressor-states that refuse to obey the laws of the international community,\” said Brown.
However, he said he was \”developing the concept of a just peace\” - with reconstruction and giving people a \”stake in the future\” - as a lesson of the Iraq invasion.
\”We won the battle within almost seven days but it has taken almost seven years to win the peace in Iraq,\” Brown said.
Former cabinet minister Claire Short, who quit the government in 2003, said last month that Brown was \”marginalised and not in the inner group\” when Blair took Britain to war against
