Tony Blair interview: Key quotes

Key quotes from Prime Minister Tony Blair's interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

BRITISH TROOPS IN IRAQ

I don't think we should be apologising because we are not causing the terrorism. We are trying to support the democrats against the terrorists.

Although the situation is terrible, particularly around Baghdad.... I think we should be immensely proud of what we are doing there particularly in terms of helping Iraq get back on to its feet and be the country its people want it to be.

Tony Blair: British self interest bound up in interdependent world

We are moving to a support role, we are not getting out of the province altogether... We have the full combat capability that is there, so if we are needed to go back in any set of circumstances, we can. However, that's not the same as then increasing back the number of troops.

AFTERMATH OF IRAQ INVASION

It was a terrible situation under Sadaam. He was a bloody dictator. It is better he is gone but, you are right, there is a very grim situation in Iraq right now.

All I am saying is the grim situation is not the desire of the people there and it is in a sense absolutely our responsibility to make sure we stay with them whilst it is their wish in order to make sure what they want...

These forces that are operating in Iraq at the moment, it's not a fault of planning or administration, it is a deliberate attempt by external extremists, like al-Qaeda, like elements connected to Iran, linking up with internal extremists to thwart the will of the majority.

There was no way that the Iraqi police force that was there under Saddam was going to be able to keep order in the country properly. [It was] an instrument of Saddam's dictatorship and therefore you were always going to have to build the Iraq police and army from scratch.

That was what we were going to have to do.

Now, you can argue about - and I've already been back over it myself - about whether you could disbanded the army differently and so forth but it isn't the principle reason you've got a problem in Iraq.

TERRORISM

There is no justification - not merely in terms of terrorism as a method of advancing your politics.

There is no justification even within their own terms for saying that when you remove, for example, the Taleban... it somehow justifies or excuses them blowing up wholly innocent people on the London Tube.

Until we confront that propaganda head on and stop saying, well, you know, now they use this as an excuse means that we should alter our foreign policy... Rubbish.

Of course we shouldn't alter our foreign policy as a result of the fact that these people use in a totally inexcusable way parts of our foreign policy when that foreign policy actually is about bringing democracy to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and the very people they support are the ones trying to wreck that democracy.

IRAN

I can tell you that Iran is not Iraq.

There is, as far as I know, no planning going on to make an attack on Iran and people are pursuing a diplomatic and political solution, for a very good reason, incidentally.

Because it's the only solution that anyone can think of that is viable and sensible. Can I just make this point - the question people should be asking me is what do you do if they get a nuclear weapon?

It's a very hard question. Which is why we had better make sure this diplomatic and political strategy works.

FOREIGN POLICY INTERVENTIONS

I think the world in which we live in today means that our self interest, and this is a function of what I call a far more interdependent world, our self interest cannot be pursued unless we understand that what happens today in one part of the world affects us ultimately in our part of the world...

If we let Sudan get any worse, if we let Somalia crumble, if we don't intervene to try to help those countries in Africa, at some point in the world in which we live today, those problems will come back and visit themselves upon us.

I think we can be proud of the interventions we have made. In removing the dictatorships that we have from Sierra Leone, from Kosovo, from Afghanistan and Iraq, yes, I believe the world is a better place, for the removal of those dictators.