Blair weathers anti-war revolt

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair faced an anti-war revolt by his own backers, while French President Jacques Chirac won broad support for resisting war on Iraq yesterday.

Both leaders stuck to their guns in parliamentary debates, defending conflicting timetables and methods for disarming President Saddam Hussein, and making a mockery of last week's short-lived facade of European unity on the crisis.

Mr Blair, facing a rebel amendment by around 100 MPs from his Labour party saying the case for war is not proven, told the House of Commons that Iraq was missing the final chance to disarm peacefully: "Saddam still has the opportunity, if he were to take it, of full compliance but so far he has not done so."

The amendment was defeated, thanks partly to Tory support, by 393 votes to 199. A further vote on the government's motion - effectively giving Saddam a final warning - was passed by 434 votes to 124.

However, the revolt was one of the biggest Mr Blair has faced and a severe embarrassment after a million anti-war protesters marched through London this month.

As US warplanes bombed two military communications sites in southern Iraq yesterday the fourth US strike on Iraq in two days Saddam told Americans he would rather die than leave his country, dismissing suggestions he could go into exile to avoid war.

"We will die here. We will die in this country and we will maintain our honour the honour that is required ... in front of our people," he said in an interview with CBS News anchorman Dan Rather. "Whoever decides to forsake his nation from whoever requests is not true to the principles."

"I believe that whoever ... offers Saddam asylum in his own country is in fact a person without morals."

US president George Bush said last month that he would welcome Saddam Hussein going into exile and some Arab countries, most notably Saudi Arabia, have proposed offering Saddam exile to avoid a war. Saddam also denied any links to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network and indicated he would not set fire to Iraq's oil fields or destroy its dams if a US-led invasion occurred in Iraq.

He said that Iraq had never had any relationship to al-Qaida terrorists, "and I think that Mr bin Laden himself has recently, in one of his speeches, given such an answer that we have no relation with him".

In Paris, Mr Chirac made his case for giving UN arms inspectors more time and resources to an unconvinced Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.