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Iran-UK: Blair concerned over mullahs' nuclear program, support for terrorism and "meddling" in Ir |
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Tuesday, 22 November 2005 |
NCRI - Tony Blair, British Prime Minister, told a committee of senior
backbench MPs on Monday that recent events in Iran "don't exactly augur
well,” and voiced "real, genuine" concerns over the direction Iran is
taking.
The Prime Minister said the rogue state's nuclear programme, support for terrorism and "meddling" in Iraq were all worries.
"On each of those three issues we have real, genuine cause for
concern," He said. "Now no one is talking military action or any of the
rest of it. Iran is a quite different country in many, many ways and it
may well be that the change in Iran comes from within, ultimately.”
"Things have definitely got more difficult since the election of the
new president, and we have to be honest about that," he told the MPs.
If Iran were to develop a military nuclear capability, it would be "a
very serious threat to world stability and peace", warned Mr Blair.
The long term goal had to be the spread of democracy and human rights
in the Middle East, he continued. "If you get that you will change a
lot with the security and other problems we have in the world today."
Mr Blair added: "I think for far too many of these regimes in the
Middle East, they entered into a kind of unspoken pact with their
people, with parts of their civic society where, in return for very low
levels of political and human rights, you ended up with a religious
extremist element being given its head. And I think that is what we are
living with." |
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