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Highlights of the Bush-Blair news conference
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The following are highlights from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush's joint press conference at the White House Thursday. BUSH: Prime Minister Blair and I have the same goal: The government and future of Iraq will be in the hands of the people of Iraq. The creation of a strong and stable Iraqi democracy is not easy, but it's an essential part on the war against terror. A free Iraq will be an example to the entire Middle East. And the advance of liberty in the Middle East will undermine the ideologies of terror and hatred and will help strengthen the security of America and Britain and many other nations. === BLAIR: So let us be clear, we have been dealing with a situation in which the threat was very clear and the person, Saddam Hussein, wielding that threat, someone of total brutality and ruthlessness with no compunction about killing his own people or those of another nation. And, of course, it's difficult to reconstruct Iraq. It's going to be a hard task; we never expected otherwise. But as the president has said to you a moment or two ago, the benefit of that reconstruction will be felt far beyond the territory of Iraq. It is, as I said earlier today, an indispensable part of bringing a new settlement in the whole of the Middle East. === QUESTION: Mr. President, others in your administration have said that your words on Iraq and Africa did not belong in your State of the Union address. Will you take responsibility -- personal responsibility for those words? BUSH: Well, first, I take responsibility for putting our troops into action. And I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security, and a threat to the security of other nations. I take responsibility for making the decision, the tough decision, to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein, because the intelligence -- not only our intelligence, but the intelligence of this great country -- made a clear and compelling case that Saddam Hussein was a threat to security and peace. === BLAIR: The British intelligence that we have we believe is genuine. We stand by that intelligence. And one interesting fact, I think, people don't generally know, in case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention: In the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased around about 270 tons of uranium from Niger. So I think we should just factor that into our thinking there. === BLAIR: The issue here is very, very simple. The whole debate for weeks revolved around a claim that either I or a member of my staff had effectively inserted intelligence into the dossier we put before the British people against the wishes of the intelligence services. Now that is a serious charge. It never was true. Everybody now knows that that charge is untrue. And all we are saying is those who made that charge should simply accept that it is untrue. It's as simple as that. === BLAIR: And I simply say -- which is why I totally agree with the president -- it's important we wait for the Iraq survey group to complete their work. Because the proposition that actually he was not developing such weapons and such programs rests on this rather extraordinary proposition: that having for years obstructed the United Nations inspectors and concealed his programs, having finally effectively got rid of them in December '98, he then took all the problems and sanctions and action upon himself, voluntarily destroyed them but just didn't tell anyone. I don't think that's very likely as a proposition. I really don't.
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