Blair: Iraq is a direct and very real threat to Britain

Tony Blair yesterday gave his clearest explanation yet of the need to target Saddam Hussein, using British forces if necessary. Iraq was a "direct" and "very real" threat to Britain, he said.

The Prime Minister, in the United States for talks at President George Bush's Camp David retreat, reiterated his determination to halt the Iraqi President's programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction "one way or another".

Mr Blair said: "The point I would emphasise is the threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain. If these weapons are developed and used there is no way that any conflict Saddam initiated using these weapons would not have direct implications for the interests of Britain."

Mr Blair said evidence on Iraq's potential nuclear capability indicated work of a "highly suspicious nature". Unilateral military action remained an option despite opposition internationally and among US and British politicians and public.

The British public's hostility to an attack on Iraq is confirmed in an exclusive YouGov poll published today in The Independent on Sunday.

Half of those questioned said that the US should not go it alone and attack Saddam Hussein, while 33 per cent were in favour and 17 per cent had not made up their minds. Almost two-thirds are against any British contribution to a US-led force.

But 68 per cent would be in favour of British action if acting on a United Nations mandate. The poll shows, however, 90 per cent support for a deadline to be set for weapons inspectors to be let back into Iraq, and 74 per cent in favour of United Nations military action if Iraq ignored that deadline.

This week, President Bush will make his case to the UN. Some members of the UN Security Council are opposed to military action, but Mr Blair claimed yesterday that the international community was "at first base" on the road to agreeing military action and that he had engaged in constructive talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Members of Mr Blair's Cabinet are understood to have expressed misgivings. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, harbour private doubts, with Ms Short intensely hostile to "those warmongers in the White House".

MPs are also adamant they should be consulted. The Prime Minister has rejected calls for a recall of Parliament. But the former Speaker Lord Weatherill has agreed to chair an unofficial recall of Parliament – an idea supported by an "overwhelming" majority of MPs. It would be the first act of defiance of its kind since the 1640s.

In the US, too, the cracks are widening. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State and a "dove" in the Bush administration, will today restate the need for consultation and international consensus.

But, writing in The Independent on Sunday today, the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says – days before the first anniversary of the 11 September terror attacks: "We know that, unlike wars of the past, in which time was required to amass and position great armies or navies to defeat an enemy, weapons of mass destruction can be developed in secret and deployed without warning, leaving little time for the targeted nation to discern intentions or formulate a response.

"If this were to be the case, then a decision about whether or not we are at war could already have been taken. But even if it were not, recognizing a risk so great, and a margin for error so small, what is the responsible course of action for free nations – waiting until, not thousands, but tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed, or acting in anticipatory self-defence to prevent such an event from occurring?"