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CNN Live At Daybreak
Tony Blair About to be on Way to Washington
Aired July 17, 2003 - 05:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back live to London. Tony Blair about to board a plane, or he may already be on a plane on his way to Washington to meet with President Bush.
Robin Oakley, has Tony Blair boarded that plane yet?
ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He's about to board the plane, I think, Carol, and it's interesting that for this particular trip, normally for a British prime minister to be addressing a joint session of Congress and having another summit with the U.S. president would be something that would be much advertised by his folk in Downing Street. This time they played it all rather low key because, of course, Tony Blair is under massive political pressure at home over the failure to find those weapons of mass destruction. A lot of his own M.P.s are critical of him for being dragged into what they always saw as George Bush's war and going into that in too much of a hurry.
So Tony Blair at this particular time, with his political difficulties, won't really relish those pictures of him chumming it up with George Bush at the White House. It's not going to do him a lot of good at home. And there are two potential areas of trouble, of course, the Niger uranium question. Tony Blair, for some time, has maintained that Saddam Hussein was trying to get uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program. That now discounted publicly by the CIA, casting doubts on British intelligence. And yesterday in parliament, Tony Blair seemed to back away slightly from his claims that that evidence was perfectly sound, saying it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Saddam Hussein had been doing that.
The second thing is that Tony Blair is going to be under big political pressure at home to get George Bush to send back to Britain two British citizens who are held as suspects in Guantanamo Bay. Unlikely that George Bush is going to be able to give him his way on that -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Yes, going back to the uranium question for just a bit, by Tony Blair's word, that intimates that there was no hard core British intelligence that proved that anyone was buying uranium from Niger.
OAKLEY: No, they've always said that the British intelligence was separate intelligence to the documents that were handed over by the CIA to the International Atomic Energy Authority and found to be forgeries. But it has to be said that the British government's confidence in its own evidence seems somewhat to be ebbing away now with the kind of words that Tony Blair has now been using. They're still sticking to it, still saying that there was the possibility that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium, but it is really not delivered with the same certainty as before.
And all this kind of thing is causing Tony Blair huge difficulties. Two thirds of the British public now feel that they were misled by Tony Blair and that he exaggerated the case for war -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Robin Oakley live from London.
We'll get back to you throughout DAYBREAK this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired July 17, 2003 - 05:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back live to London. Tony Blair about to board a plane, or he may already be on a plane on his way to Washington to meet with President Bush.
Robin Oakley, has Tony Blair boarded that plane yet?
ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He's about to board the plane, I think, Carol, and it's interesting that for this particular trip, normally for a British prime minister to be addressing a joint session of Congress and having another summit with the U.S. president would be something that would be much advertised by his folk in Downing Street. This time they played it all rather low key because, of course, Tony Blair is under massive political pressure at home over the failure to find those weapons of mass destruction. A lot of his own M.P.s are critical of him for being dragged into what they always saw as George Bush's war and going into that in too much of a hurry.
So Tony Blair at this particular time, with his political difficulties, won't really relish those pictures of him chumming it up with George Bush at the White House. It's not going to do him a lot of good at home. And there are two potential areas of trouble, of course, the Niger uranium question. Tony Blair, for some time, has maintained that Saddam Hussein was trying to get uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program. That now discounted publicly by the CIA, casting doubts on British intelligence. And yesterday in parliament, Tony Blair seemed to back away slightly from his claims that that evidence was perfectly sound, saying it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Saddam Hussein had been doing that.
The second thing is that Tony Blair is going to be under big political pressure at home to get George Bush to send back to Britain two British citizens who are held as suspects in Guantanamo Bay. Unlikely that George Bush is going to be able to give him his way on that -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Yes, going back to the uranium question for just a bit, by Tony Blair's word, that intimates that there was no hard core British intelligence that proved that anyone was buying uranium from Niger.
OAKLEY: No, they've always said that the British intelligence was separate intelligence to the documents that were handed over by the CIA to the International Atomic Energy Authority and found to be forgeries. But it has to be said that the British government's confidence in its own evidence seems somewhat to be ebbing away now with the kind of words that Tony Blair has now been using. They're still sticking to it, still saying that there was the possibility that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium, but it is really not delivered with the same certainty as before.
And all this kind of thing is causing Tony Blair huge difficulties. Two thirds of the British public now feel that they were misled by Tony Blair and that he exaggerated the case for war -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Robin Oakley live from London.
We'll get back to you throughout DAYBREAK this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
