Saddam Hussein should be tried in Iraq if a proper, independent judicial process can be established, the Prime Minister said today.
In an interview with the BBC Arabic Service earlier today, Mr Blair said that people are only tried in international tribunals if there is not a proper tribunal for trial within the country itself adding:
"Now provided that the Iraqis can develop the special tribunal that they have set up in a way that is a proper and fair process, then I think it should be left to the Iraqis themselves.
"We are actually simply saying that Iraq should be treated no differently from any other country."
Read the transcript of the interview
Interviewer
Prime Minister, I had the honour of meeting you when you first came to office during the annual Party Conference in Blackpool, when you came to the Centre, that was organised by the Arab Ambassador, if you remember, and I am honoured to meet you now, and on behalf of the Arabic Service, thank you very much indeed. I just wanted to tell you that the BBC World Service and Arabic Service represent excellent value for money and we deserve all the support we get from you and from other politicians - end of political party broadcast …
Prime Minister
Well you are quite right too, so don’t worry, we will carry on supporting you.
Interviewer
Mr Blair, we understand that the American President, President Bush, said that following his capture, the Iraqi President will get a fair trial that he for so long deprived the Iraqi people from. We also listened to some expressions from the Governing Council and from the Iraqi government. All of it indicates that they would like to see the Iraqi President executed and they have preconceptions about the Iraqi President. We also heard international judges expressing reservations that he needs really for a fair trial, he needs an international trial. What I am asking you is what guarantee can you tell the Arab listeners that would ensure the Iraqi President will get a fair trial?
Prime Minister
I think it is very important that we apply the principles that we should always apply in these circumstances. Contrary to some things that are said, actually we don’t try people in international tribunals unless there is not a proper tribunal for trial within the country itself. Now provided that the Iraqis can develop the special tribunal that they have set up in a way that is a proper and fair process, then I think it should be left to the Iraqis themselves, and I don’t think they should be treated differently from any other country in that regard.
Interviewer
They say why should it be right for Congo and Yugoslavia, but not for Saddam?
Prime Minister
The point about Milosevic was that Milosevic was being tried for a significant part for crimes that were outside actually the Serbian jurisdiction, and it is also the case that for the International Criminal Court, which people also talk about, that is only for crimes committed after a date last year. So I think it is important to recognise that when we are saying that provided the Iraqis can establish a proper independent judicial process, it should be done in Iraq. We are actually simply saying that Iraq should be treated no differently from any other country.
Interviewer
During the war in Iraq we know that yourselves and the Americans expressed reservation as to the showing, the parading of prisoners of war by the Iraqi Television and some Arab media. Though a great number of people expressed delight that he was captured, but there are expressions of resentment to the way he was paraded on the television, they say it really represents humiliation for him. Our online site generated a lot of e-mails. If I may just read one very quickly to you, a lot of them welcomed his capture and his showing, but some of them, one of them for example says: "This is a great humiliation for Arabs. Those who are jubilant should ask themselves why Saddam was not treated courteously, as Milosevic was. He did make huge mistakes, but showing his pictures after his arrest is an insult to all Muslims."
Prime Minister
Well first of all I think you will find that within Iraq itself it was very, very important to demonstrate and show to people that he was actually captured, so that people in Iraq could see it was Saddam himself. And he was not being mistreated in any way, and neither will he be mistreated in any way. No matter what he has done to other people, he won’t be. And the second thing that I think is very, very important, I hope we are gradually getting over this argument that somehow the conflict in Iraq was a conflict between the Western world and the Muslim world, or the Christian world and the Muslim world, or the Western world and the Arab world. The fact is the victims of Saddam were Muslims.
The beneficiaries of the liberation of Iraq from Saddam are Muslims. Iraq will be run by Muslims in the end, it will be run by the Iraqi people. You know I think we have got to stop this characterisation. You can criticise us for the conflict, or you can criticise us for our attitude towards Saddam Hussein, but it should be nothing to do with religion. It isn’t. And when we effectively removed Milosevic from power, we first of all put him out of Kosovo and then he was removed from power. The Kosovo Albanians were Muslims, and we went there and British troops fought to protect them. And I think it is important that whatever disagreements we have about these things, they are not couched in the language of religion because they are really not about that at all.
Interviewer
You may have caught the man himself, the head of the regime himself.However, the basic principle on which the war was waged is weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix only yesterday said there is no visible means that weapons of mass destruction are there. Are you at all worried that up to now there has been no trace at all of weapons of mass destruction. How much does it worry you?
Prime Minister
Of course I would like the Iraq Survey Group to complete its work and to find whatever weapons Saddam had, because one thing is beyond doubt, he had them. And when Hans Blix says well there is no physical evidence, of course there was no physical evidence of the full extent of his biological programme for several years in the early 1990s, but it was only after the defection of his son-in-law to Jordan that we discovered the existence of that programme. So I don’t think it is surprising that we will have to look for them, but I simply say to you that he had them is beyond doubt, he used them, he used them against Iran, he used them against his own people. The evidence uncovered already is of a huge network of clandestine operations that are simply impossible to imagine without there actually being some purpose in these clandestine operations, and the purpose obviously was to conceal the weapons.
Interviewer
Forgive me to ask you, are you still confident that they may be found?
Prime Minister
I am confident that the Iraqi Survey Group, when it does its work, will find what has happened to those weapons, because that he had them, there is absolutely no doubt at all.
Interviewer
The Americans might have caught Saddam Hussein, they might have strong control on the ground, but they have failed so far to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Considering your relative success in the south, and your past involvement in the Middle East in general, what sort of advice would you give to the Americans to win their hearts and minds?
Prime Minister
The situation in the south in Iraq is different, but then it is easier because we have got a predominantly Shia population there and these people have always suffered very, very heavily under Saddam. Up in Baghdad it is a different story, but what is extremely important is for us to give a very strong message to the Sunni population in Iraq that they have a place in this new Iraq, they are not going to be excluded, that Iraq should be truly representative of all the people in Iraq. And it is even true that there are people who were in the Baath Party under Saddam who were there, not because they wanted to be, but because they had to be. And we should also be reaching out to some of them also.
Because ourselves and the Iraqi people - this is the great thing to remember - have a common objective now, we don’t have a different objective. All we want is for Iraq to be on its feet as a stable democratic prosperous country, and we will not stay a moment longer than we need to in order to help the Iraqi people achieve that goal. The Iraqi people for their part I am sure would like to do that too.
Already, after the fall of Saddam, they have got access to the internet, the teachers are being paid properly, the public servants are being paid properly, the electricity and the water supplies are now increasing. We have got something like 17,000 different construction projects under way in Iraq. The oil money, the money that everyone told us we were going to steal from the Iraqis, is now in a UN account and is being used for the Iraqi people. So the great thing to remember here, and that is why my advice to the Americans or anybody else is, we should all of us remember in the end it is a common purpose. If Iraq is there as a stable democratic prosperous country, that is good for Iraq, it is also a huge signal for the rest of the world. And it is good for us because it then nails the lie that somehow we went there to rob them of the oil; we went there because this was a sort of colonial war. We went there because we believed Saddam was a threat to his region, to the world, indeed to his own people, and we believe the world is a better place without him.
Interviewer
Prime Minister, you have said repeatedly that you would like to see Iraq as a prosperous country, enjoying the benefits of democracy. Building on your experience and the American experience in Iraq, do you think it represents a good example to be applied elsewhere in the Middle East?
Prime Minister
Well I hope that the Middle East as a whole in the end moves towards greater democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law, because that is the best way for people to live. And contrary to some of the propaganda, these aren’t western values, they are human values. And everywhere in the world where people are given the chance to live in a democratic system, to be free, to be free to criticise their government or to support it, to be free to put their government in and put their government out, to have a judicial system where it doesn’t matter who you know, but your rights are guaranteed in law and upheld properly, to have a proper impartial judicial and police system, these are things that people want everywhere. And I hope that the whole of the Middle East moves towards that because in the end that is the best way that we can provide peace and stability. It is not going to be provided simply by military means alone, it has got to be won on the basis of ideas and the human heart.
Interviewer
We know the last year wasn’t a particularly easy one for yourself. Had you had your way, would you have done anything differently?
Prime Minister
No. When I see what is actually happening in Iraq today, and I know it is difficult because these terrorists from around the region are fighting there, and a few former Saddam sympathisers and so on, but I also know, because we get letters in, and I was at an Eid ceremony for the end of Ramadan yesterday and I met several Iraqis who were there, some of whom had come over from Iraq, some of whom were Iraqis who were exiled here in this country where we have several hundred thousand Iraqis who were exiled and live in this country, and their joy at the freedom that they have is the best thing possible to keep you going in the work that you do. And I think there is something else that is going on at a broader level here in international relations where we are slowly learning that this doctrine that has held sway for a long period of time, that it doesn’t matter how brutally a country’s people are oppressed, the outside world stands by and does nothing, that that doctrine has not really got a place in the 21st century. We should be saying that there are certain basic principles of human justice that should be upheld everywhere, and that it should be the function of the international community, working together and operating on a proper basis, to try and bring that hope to all the people of the world.
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