British minister who resigned over Iraq wants troops home

LONDON (AFP) Mar 29, 2003
A former British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who resigned from the government in opposition to war with Iraq, has demanded that Britain's troops return from the battlefield.

"I have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war," Cook wrote in the mass-circulation newspaper the Sunday Mirror. His article was released in advance of publication.

"I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed," Cook said.

Responding quickly to Cook's comments, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's office said the government would "see the military campaign through until we achieve our objectives: that is, (Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein) gone and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction disarmed."

Cook meanwhile accused the US-led coalition of laying siege to Baghdad -- a move that he said would result in massive civilian suffering and many unnecessary deaths.

"(US Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld has come up with a new tactic. Instead of going into Baghdad, we should sit down outside it until Saddam surrenders.

"There is no more brutal form of warfare than a siege. People go hungry. The water and power to provide the sinews of a city snap. Children die," Cook wrote.

He also warned that the Allies risked stoking up a "long-term legacy of hatred" for the West across the Arab and Muslim world because of the war.

The bodies of 10 of the 23 British servicemen who have so far died in the Iraq war were flown home on Saturday.

Eight of the returning dead British soldiers were killed when the US Sea Knight helicopter they were aboard crashed south of the Kuwaiti border on March 21.

The other two bodies were those of the crew of the British GR4 Tornado warplane which was hit near the Kuwaiti border by a US Patriot missile last Sunday.

According to official figures, 23 British soldiers have been killed in total since the start of the US-led war on March 20 -- 14 in helicopter accidents, four in combat, and five as a result of "friendly fire".

Cook resigned as Leader of the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, on March 17, three days before Britain went to war alongside the United States.

Cook, foreign secretary between 1997 and 2001, stepped down because he could not accept responsibility for British involvement in Iraq without international backing.

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