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Tony Blair In Qinghua University
QUESTION:Seven days ago during your visit to the USA, newspaper cuttings commented that the UK had become the 51 st state 1 of the United States. I want your views about that comment.
PRIME MINISTER:On the 51 st state , well that is what is often said by people who oppose Britain's strong alliance with the United States of America . And actually it is not true to say that we don't have our disagreements with the United States, sometimes we do. The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change2 was an example of that. But I am proud of our relationship with the United States and I am proud of the partnership that we have . But I don't think that we should see a strong relationship with the United States as the only strong relationship we can have. The problems that we face are problems to do with global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in the hands of irresponsible people, I think they are climate change, I think it is economic globalisation, I think it is to do with how we extend development to the poorest parts of the world. But I think those challenges are best dealt with by nations working together. So we have a close relationship with the United States, but we are also part of the European Union. I would like a closer relationship between the UK and China, because I think how China develops in this international framework is going to be vitally important. I think 21 st century politics is about nations coming together on a common agenda. Now that means in my view, not that we come together simply on an agenda that America sets, but that we come together on an agenda that we set together. I think that the path for Britain is not to be worried about our alliance with the United States, I think it is good that we have got an alliance with the United States, but I think we should be using that influence to try and bring the United States and other countries together on a common agenda that we are all happy with, that your leadership here in China is happy with, the European Union, the Russians, countries like India that are developing too . We have all got to get in the same place on the same agenda, and that is what we are working towards, because I think that is the best thing for people . .. I really do.
QUESTION:You are around my father's age and like my father. Would you tell me here honestly, like talking to your own children, that you never lied on the Iraq war?
PRIME MINISTER:What would I say to my children? What I would say to them is this, that in the end as a political leader you have got to take the decisions that you think are right, and those decisions are sometimes very, very difficult. But I believe passionately in relation to Iraq, we could not allow Saddam Hussein to carry on developing weapons of mass destruction3 , and don't be in any doubt that he was doing it, because we had 23 different United Nations resolutions about the very issue of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. So please don 't anyone here think this is something that suddenly was dreamed up by the Americans or the British , it was there , it was a serious issue . That is why the United Nations inspectors were in Iraq throughout the 1990s. They were then forced to leave at the end of 1998, it was why they went back in November after the United Nations resolution. So I don't have any doubt about the threat that he posed, and I don't have any doubt either about the danger of that threat in the hands of a man like Saddam. It is difficult for people here just to appreciate4 this, but out of a country of 23 million, 4 million of its people were in exile —4 million of them were in exile . Literally5 tens of thousands of children used to die of malnutrition every single year, of preventable diseases, because of the way he ran the country. And to allow someone like that to carry on being a security threat to the world I thought was the wrong thing, so I took the action that I did. Now there will be people here , and I totally understand it, who disagree with that decision, and the difficult thing about being a political leader is that in the end you have to take the decisions that you believe are right and stand by them. I took the decision I thought was right and I stick by it. And that is what I would say to my children or anybody else's children.
练习题：
Ⅰ. Matching:
1. prime minister A. homeless
2. alliance B. agreement
3. protocol C. decision
4. resolution D. premier
5. appreciate E. union
6. in exile F. understand
Ⅱ. Questions :
1. Who is the head of Iraq ?
2. How many resolutions UN passed to forbid Saddam Hussein to carry on developing weapons of mass destruction?
3. Why did newspaper cuttings comment that the UK had become the 51st state of the United States?
