Tony Blair: Saddam Hussein hanging was 'completely wrong'

Prime Minister Tony Blair believes that the way in which former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed was "completely wrong", Downing Street said today.

Mr Blair will make his view on the execution clear in public comments over the coming week and will confirm his support for the Iraqi Government's investigation into how scenes of Saddam being taunted came to be filmed and broadcast.

The insight into the PM's thinking came after Chancellor Gordon Brown used a TV interview to denounce the manner of Saddam's death as "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable".

Mr Blair has come under growing pressure - including from Labour MPs - to comment publicly on the December 30 execution, but has so far stayed silent.

Downing Street today declined to confirm precisely when Mr Blair would make his comments on Saddam's hanging or whether they would come in a speech or a statement.

And a spokeswoman made clear that the exact terms of his comments would not be made public in advance.

But she added: "In terms of what he will say next week, we don't think there are going to be any surprises on where he stands.

"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."

Mr Brown's denunciation of Saddam's hanging echoed the comments of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who last week said that the way it was done was "deplorable" and those responsible should be "ashamed".

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt also today added her voice to the criticisms of the conduct of those responsible, describing the treatment of Saddam before his hanging was "very shocking".

Their comments added to the pressure on Mr Blair to make his views known.

In an interview recorded yesterday, Mr Brown told BBC1's Sunday AM: "Now that we know the full picture of what happened, we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events.

"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 what has happened in Iraq."

Mr Brown acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the handling of Iraq following the 2003 war, and did not rule out a future inquiry into what went wrong.

And he said that, in the war on terror, more emphasis should be placed on the battle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world, rather than the military action which has dominated the joint US and UK response to September 11.

He gave a strong hint that he would not support any increase in British troop numbers in Iraq if President George Bush announces a "surge" of as many as 20,000 US soldiers as expected next week.

UK personnel in the south of Iraq should continue their move away from combat and towards greater involvement in reconstruction operations and thousands of them can be expected to have left the country by the end of this year, he said.

Interviewer Andrew Marr asked Mr Brown whether he would commission an inquiry into the post-war handling of Iraq if he becomes Prime Minister as expected later this year.

He replied: "There will always be reviews into what happened. The lessons we have got to learn are two-fold.

"One is that in Iraq itself there is absolutely no doubt - and I think people will agree on this in time - that the passage of authority to the local population should have begun a lot earlier, so they had to take more responsibility for what was happening in their own country.

"I think, more generally, as far as the war on terror is concerned, the lesson I learned - and I think this is going to be of huge significance in the years to come - 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.

"That makes me think of the same cultural war that had to be fought against Communism in the 1940s and '50s onwards as, in a sense, the model for what we have got to do here."

He made clear he did not envisage any reinforcement of UK troops in Iraq in response to a "surge" in the US deployment.

Asked about Mr Bush's apparent plans to beef up the US military presence in the country, Mr Brown said: "What I can be sure about is that the policy we are pursuing in Basra and in the four provinces for which we have got responsibility - that policy will be the policy we are pursuing now.

"That policy is to continue to move troops from combat to training, to complete the redevelopment work - because that is the issue in this area, as in so much of Iraq, the reconstruction of Iraq.

"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.

"I believe it is true to say that by the end of the year, there may be thousands less in Iraq than there are now."

Mr Brown acknowledged that he should bear a share of the responsibility for any flaws in the Government's policy towards Iraq.

"I take my full responsibility and I will not shirk it, as a member of the Government, for the decisions that were taken," he said.

"But I do say that there are lessons to be learnt, particularly from what happened immediately after Saddam Hussein fell."

Trade and industry minister Margaret Hodge said she "abhorred" the way in which Saddam was killed.

She told Sunday Live on Sky News: "I am one of those who oppose capital punishment.

"We all abhor the way in which that capital punishment was executed, but I think it is the capital punishment that is the key issue and somehow we do get diverted from that onto other issues."

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said the manner in which Saddam was hanged was an "abomination".

He said: "It was the most deplorable act guaranteed to create even more tensions and hostility in an already very explosive area.

"It was an abomination and Tony Blair should have said that straight away."

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore said: "We have now heard Gordon Brown and John Prescott speaking out about the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution, as well as a Downing Street spokesperson.

"What we really need to hear is the Prime Minister condemning what happened in his own words."

Copyight Press Association 2007