British Prime Minister Tony Blair was in favour of announcing a timetable to pull troops out of Iraq, but was “brainwashed” out of it by President George W Bush, Iraq’s vice president said on Tuesday. Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi told New York’s Council on Foreign Relations that when he spoke with Blair about three months ago, the British leader was supportive of his appeal for the United States and Britain to say when they would withdraw. “I had just convinced him,” Hashemi said. “He promised he was going to discuss the subject with President Bush, but at the end of the day, it’s quite unfortunate, that your president (made) some sort of brainwashing of Mr Blair.” But Hashemi also said any withdrawal of troops should be conditional on US training of Iraq’s security forces.
Blair, who visited Baghdad on Sunday, defended on Tuesday his nationÂ’s close US alliance in response to an influential British think tankÂ’s report that found the relationship has damaged BritainÂ’s credibility in the Middle East.
Hashemi, in comments to Reuters after his Council on Foreign Relations address, said that Blair had been “open-minded” about announcing a troop pullout. “He promised me to take this message to Mr Bush, in fact, and he said ‘I’m going to support that’,” he said.