• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Miliband acknowledges backlash caused by Iraq war

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, May 21, IRNA – Foreign Secretary David Miliband Thursday was seeking to repair some of the damage to Britain’s reputation caused by the invasion of Iraq by placing the war alongside the Crusades and colonialism in a list of “prejudices that British history generates.”

“The invasion of Iraq, and its aftermath, aroused a sense of bitterness, distrust and resentment,” Miliband was set to admit in a speech to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, according to advance extracts of his speech.

But he was not expected to go as far as apologising for voting for the war in 2003 only that it was “clear” ” about how Britain is viewed as a consequence of its controversial decision to back the US-led invasion.

In January, the foreign secretary took the step of admitting that the launch of the so-called ‘war on terror’ following the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001 was “wrong” and may have caused "more harm than good".

In his latest admission to his Muslim audience, extracts of his speech obtained by the Times newspaper listed the Iraq war along with other gross blunders made by Britain in its imperial past.

“Decisions taken many years ago in [the Foreign Office] are still felt on the landscape of the Middle East,” Milband was due to say. “Ruined Crusader castles remain as poignant monuments to the religious violence of the Middle Ages.”

On Britain’s role in the Middle East, there were also the continuing consequences that “lines drawn on maps by colonial powers were succeeded, among other things, by the failure to establish two states in Palestine.”

“When people hear about Britain, too often they think of these things,” the foreign secretary was set to admit after completing the list with the Iraq war.

His speech was being billed as an appeal for a “new coalition of consent” between the West and the Islamic world, while calling for urgent action on progress on a peaceful resolution to the Middle East.