51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Peace deal/troop movements; ITN ENGLAND: London: Downing Street: INT Tony Blair MP (Prime Minister) interviewed SOT - we believed in the cause for which we were fighting, we took military advice & they advised it could be done, and I was quite certain it had to be done because whatever the position you take on whether it's right to use force or not, surely the one set of circumstances in which it is justified is to prevent racial genocide, therefore for me, it was a decision that was very straight forward, altho difficult to implement - we were risking our lives, and if the conflict had intensified, the risks would have been greater / when our forces go into Kosovo now, they will be running considerable risks (land mines, pockets of resistance), it is not a safe environment - we have to make sure that the money that we would have been spending on weapons is used to invest in the future, otherwise we end up interfering again in a conflict, as happened in Bosnia / there is no cost free option, just as there was no easy choice in starting the conflict / we worked so hard to prevent this conflict - none of us went into this conflict without careful scrutiny of all the alternatives - I don't know if this conflict has changed me, but I don't feel a sense of triumph or joy, because I know many terrible things have happened & many innocent people have died / I feel a burden of responsibility to make sure that we carry the peace thru & make that work / need to address the question of international conflicts & how we resolve them - as a government, we have done our best to resolve this conflict / we worked as a team, but we've still got to come back to domestic issues & address the things we were elected to do / 'I don't think there is any danger of losing a sense of proper perspective' CF = B0551580 or B0551582 20.09.01 to 20.15.36 FX PAB = B0462098 Order Ref: BSP100699013