Prime Minister Tony Blair made an impassioned defence Friday of his decision to take Britain to war in Iraq, insisting that it was the right move given the nature of the threat from global terrorism.
Under fire for not publishing the legal advice he was given shortly before the US-led invasion that led to Saddam Hussein's downfall, Blair said that his decision to go to war was the most divisive he had ever made.
"It remains deeply divisive today," Blair said in a speech in his constituency of Sedgefield, north-east England.
The issue of Iraq could not just be "swept away" because "the nature of the global threat we face in Britain and round the world is real," Blair said.
"It is the task of leadership to expose it and fight it, whatever the political cost," he said.
Blair played down the row over the legality of the war Friday and maintained that the existing UN resolutions had been ample justification to take Britain to war.
"The truth is, we went to war to enforce compliance with United Nations resolutions," he said.
"Had we believed Iraq was an imminent direct threat to Britain, we would have taken action in September 2002. We would not have gone to the UN," Blair said.
Blair, US President George W. Bush's main ally over Iraq, has suffered a popularity crisis since the war, plummeting in opinion polls and plagued by attacks from former cabinet ministers Clare Short and Robin Cook.
Short, who quit as Blair's international development secretary last May in protest over the war, has alleged that Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith was "leant on" to justify Britain joining the war in the absence of a final explicit UN Security Council resolution.
But Blair said Friday that the latest Iraq controversy was no more than an "elaborate smokescreen" which would soon be replaced by another row "then another and then another".
"The real point is that those who disagree with the war, disagree fundamentally with the judgement that led to war," Blair said.