By IRNA
London : Foreign Secretary David Miliband has refused to say whether he is proud that Britain went to war in Iraq but rather suggests that the UK should be much more humble about the disastrous consequences.
“A lot of our people have died. A much larger number of Iraqis have died. You have to have a lot of humility about what happened,” Miliband said.
In an interview with the New Statesman magazine, he spoke in detail about former prime minister Tony Blair’s criteria for “humanitarian intervention”, and how it foundered in Iraq.
“There’s all sorts of things we could talk about – there are lessons, there are things that haven’t gone right,” the foreign secretary admitted about Iraq but when challenged was said to have declined to say the war was a great cause he was proud of.
“I believe this was done for the right reasons – I don’t believe the conspiracy theories. I believe it was done after a lot of hard thought and a lot of hard searching,” he still insisted though.
Miliband’s comments came as he was reportedly preparing to rebalance Britain’s vision of its place in the world on a more international basis, taking account of the growing importance of China and India.
“Britain is not a bridge between Europe and America: it can instead be a global hub, plugged into the networks that matter,” he was due to say in keynote speech at the Fabian Society’s Change the World conference later Saturday.