BRITAIN: The former US president, Mr Bill Clinton, wowed the British Labour Party conference in Blackpool yesterday while urging it to back the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and President George Bush over Iraq.
Accompanied by the film star Kevin Spacey, Mr Clinton brought a touch of Hollywood, holding the conference spellbound with a world view of international institutions leading the global community from a state of interdependence to one of integration - fighting battles against international terrorists and tyrants with weapons of mass destruction, but also against the scourge of AIDS, climate change, ignorance, poverty and disease.
Labour delegates applauded warmly as the former president said the US could lead but not dominate the world, and again when he said the West itself was not blameless over Iraq. However, the combination of compassion and complexity demonstrated Mr Clinton's political mastery, and handsomely rewarded the British Prime Minister for his loyalty during times of crisis in his presidency.
With 40 per cent of the delegates having opposed military action earlier this week, Mr Clinton sometimes seemed to move to the left of Mr Blair, acknowledging widespread concerns about American leadership and UN authority, while giving Mr Blair welcome political cover in his ongoing alliance with President Bush in preparation for a war many in the Labour Party fear is all but inevitable.
Mr Clinton strongly supported Mr Blair's determination "if at all possible to act through the UN". Saddam Hussein as usual, he said, was bobbing and weaving: "We should call his bluff."
At the same time he backed Washington and London in rejecting the latest deal for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, demanding a new UN resolution complete with a deadline and "no lack of clarity as to what Saddam Hussein must do".
If the inspections went forward, he said, a conflict could perhaps be avoided. But, having already won applause for the US/UK action in Kosovo, Mr Clinton crucially reminded delegates that that action had had to proceed without a UN resolution because of the historic ties of the Serbs to the Russians.
That happened because the UN was still in the process of becoming the kind of organisation he hoped it would be in five, 10 or 20 years.
"There are still people who vote in the United Nations based on the sort of old-fashioned national self-interest views they held in the Cold War or long before, so that not every vote reflects the clear and present interests of the world," he said.
The prospect of a resolution actually offered the chance to integrate the world, and to make the UN a more meaningful, powerful and effective institution.
"That's why I appreciate what the Prime Minister is trying to do, in trying to bring America and the rest of the world to a common position. If he was not there to do this I doubt if anyone else could," the former president said. But at the end of the day "weighing the risks and making the calls are what we elect leaders to do."
And in a further lavish tribute to Mr Blair, Mr Clinton confided: "I can tell you that, as an American, a citizen of the world, I am glad that Tony Blair will be central to weighing the risks and making the call."
He also praised Mr Blair's - and his own - contribution to the Belfast Agreement, winning long applause when he urged "the people of the land I have loved so well" to "keep their eye on the prize and don't turn back."