BRITAIN: Tony Blair has said current controversy about religious clothing and veil-wearing is symptomatic of a wider debate Britain needs to get right about "the balance between integration and multi-culturalism".
Speaking at his monthly press conference in Downing Street, Mr Blair also stressed this debate was being joined throughout Europe and across the world.
At the same time, the prime minister signalled no change in British foreign policy, insisting British forces would not "walk away" from Iraq or Afghanistan until their job was done and their mission accomplished.
Effectively endorsing Commons Leader Jack Straw - who provoked some furious Muslim reaction when he disclosed he asked constituents visiting his constituency advice centres to lift their veils - Mr Blair said the veil "is a mark of separation and that is why it makes other people from outside the community uncomfortable."
The prime minister made clear no one wanted to say people should not wear the veil: "That is to take it too far." However, he believed it was necessary "to confront this issue about how we integrate people properly into our society."
There was an issue, he said, now apparent across Europe, about how Islam "comes to terms and is comfortable with" the modern world. "We have to deal with this debate," he said. "People want to know that the Muslim community in particular, but actually all minority communities, have got the balance right between integration and multi-culturalism." Mr Blair also backed the local education authority which suspended a Muslim niqab-wearing teaching assistant for refusing to remove her veil during lessons. Saying that he could "see the reason" why Kirklees Council had suspended Aishah Azmi, Mr Blair said the question of staff wearing the veil was properly a matter for local education authorities.
Mr Blair said the row was part of the bigger debate about how Muslim communities integrated into British society. "Difficult though these issues are," he said, "they need to be raised and confronted."
Before his intervention yesterday, Labour MP Khalid Mahmood had criticised Mr Straw for starting a debate he claimed had "turned Islamophobic". The MP for Dewsbury said at the weekend that politicians needed "get a balance" on these sensitive issues. He warned, "You can't have a real debate on issues when one part of the community feels it is being targeted." Mr Blair also accepted yesterday that the question of faith schools was proving "difficult" for his government. The proposal to require new faith schools to accept up to one-quarter of their pupils from other faiths is regarded in some circles as being targeted at Muslim schools in particular, as they form the largest number of such schools in the pipeline.
However, Mr Blair reminded that it was his personal decision to end the ban on Muslim schools in the first place. "We would not be having this debate were it not for peoples' concerns about this question to do with integration and separation," he said. "So we are trying to work it through and it is difficult."
His comments pointed out the argument advanced by critics who fear his major difficulty in promoting a serious "integrationist" agenda is his government's enthusiasm for faith schools.
Mr Blair was again forced to brush off last week's warning by the head of the British Army, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, that the continuing presence of British troops in Iraq was exacerbating the difficulties the UK faced around the world.
Insisting the general had not suggested withdrawing troops "irrespective of whether the job is done", Mr Blair asserted, "If we walk away from these two countries [Iraq and Afghanistan] we will leave a situation in which the very people we are fighting everywhere, including the extremists in our own country, are heartened and emboldened, and we can't afford that to happen. So we have got to see the job through."