Twenty years ago, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair dragged the UK into the Iraq war behind the US, a move that sparked massive protests in his country.
Today, he refuses any comparison between Iraq, a war waged without a UN mandate, and Ukraine, even if Russian President Vladimir Putin used it as "
an excuse
".
Remove “a despot from power”
"
There is no reasonable justification for invading an independent and sovereign country, with a democratic president, (who posed) no problem for anyone"
and violated "
no international obligation
", explains Tony Blair in an interview with the AFP and the European press agencies, Ansa, DPA and Efe.
"
If he hadn't used this excuse (of Iraq), he would have used another
," said the 69-year-old former Labor leader of Vladimir Putin.
Read alsoA Middle East destabilized by the fall of Saddam Hussein
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein provoked two regional wars, defied multiple UN resolutions and launched a chemical attack against his own people, recalls Tony Blair.
“
At least, we can recognize that we have removed a despot from power (in Iraq) to try to install a democracy
”, he defends, from the offices of his Institute for Global Change, in the center of London.
“
Of course we can discuss all the consequences
” of the war in Iraq, he concedes.
But “
we must never forget what Vladimir Putin did in the Middle East, in Syria.
(...) His intervention in the Middle East served to maintain a despot in power and to refuse a democracy.
So we should treat all this propaganda with the little respect it deserves
,” adds Tony Blair.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: more and more Europeans see the United States as an “ally”
Vladimir Putin is now the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the war crime of “
illegal deportation
” of Ukrainian children after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a decision which Moscow says does not has no legal value.