Blair finds manner of Saddam hanging 'completely wrong'

LONDON: British Prime Minister Tony Blair believes the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution was "completely wrong", his Downing Street office said on Sunday.   

Blair has been under fire for refusing to speak on the subject, and criticism of his silence mounted after both his deputy and his finance minister condemned the hanging of the deposed Iraqi dictator as "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable". In his first engagement since returning from a New Year holiday in Miami, Blair said on Friday he would speak about the execution next week.   

"In terms of what he will say next week, we don't think there are going to be any surprises on where he stands," a spokeswoman said, while declining to say when and how Blair would make his comments on Saddam's hanging.   

"He supports the inquiry by the Iraqi authorities. He does believe that the manner of execution was completely wrong, but this shouldn't lead us to forget the crimes that Saddam committed, including the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis." The execution was carried out at the start of a key holiday while leaked mobile phone video footage showed Saddam being taunted as he stood on the gallows, prompting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to order a probe.   

Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown condemned the execution of the toppled president in an interview broadcast Sunday, becoming the highest-ranking government member to speak out so far.   

"Now that we know the full picture of what happened, we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events," the chancellor of the exchequer told BBC television.   

"It is something, of course, which the Iraqi government has now expressed its anxiety and shame at. It has done nothing to lessen tensions between the Shia and Sunni communities.   

"Even those people, unlike me, who are in favour of capital punishment found this completely unacceptable and I am pleased that there is now an inquiry into this and I hope lessons in this area will be learnt, as we learn other lessons about Iraq."   

Last week, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott similarly condemned the manner of the execution.   

Blair kept silent in the immediate aftermath, a Downing Street spokeswoman saying that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett spoke for the whole government when she said Saddam had been "held to account" for his crimes.   

Britain still has about 7,100 troops in southern Iraq, most of them based around the second of Basra, but there are mounting calls at home for them to be withdrawn.   

Blair has lost standing within his own party and across Britain for his decision to send troops in support of the March 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.   

Blair has pledged to step down by September and Brown is the hot favourite to succeed him. Brown insisted there would be no change in Britain's military activities in Iraq, saying "that policy will be the policy we are pursuing now" -- one of training Iraqi troops and reconstructing the country.   

"I am pleased that our armed forces are playing a part in that, so that we can over the next few months start to scale down our troops' presence in Iraq.   

"By the end of the year, there may be thousands less in Iraq than there are now," the Scot said.   

Brown was asked whether he would commission an inquiry into the post-war handling of Iraq should he become prime minister. "There will always be reviews into what happened. The lessons we have got to learn are two-fold," he replied.   

"One is that... the passage of authority to the local population should have begun a lot earlier. As far as the war on terror is concerned, the lesson I learned... is that by military action and policing and intelligence and security work you can achieve a great deal, but we will not win against extreme terrorist activities and propaganda activities unless we have this battle for hearts and minds as well."