UK News 13-11-2001 Blair Warns US Of Dragons` Teeth who: Tony Blair what: Gives Mansion House speech where: LONDON when: Last night snippet: In his Mansion House address at the Lord Mayor`s banquet in the City of London`s Guildhall, Tony Blair said last night that the atrocities of September 11th demonstrated how Western civilisation cannot continue "the good life" regardless of the state of the rest of the world. "Once chaos and strife have got a grip on a region or country, trouble will soon be exported," he said. He said that the allied military action was designed to irradicate a political environment in which "acts of evil can flourish and be tolerated" and to illustrate his point he asked the audience of City financiers to try to "picture the lives of jobless, embittered, and dispossessed young Arabs who are prey to the dogmas of fundamentalists," says The Telegraph`s Andy McSmith. "The dragons` teeth are planted in the fertile soil of wrongs unrighted, of disputes left to fester for years or even decades, of failed states, of poverty and deprivation," Mr Blair warned in a speech "almost certainly addressed as much at hawks in Washington as at states with ambiguous records on harbouring terrorism," remarks The Guardian`s Michael White. His address was "a clear message to the US not to slip back into isolationism and unilateral decision-making, says The Financial Times, in which he called for "initiatives in the Middle East peace process, on sanctions in Iraq, and to bring Syria and Iran in from the cold." [... more]

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