UK's Blair calls Iran major threat to West Asia

London, Dec 13: British Prime Minister Tony Blair called Iran a ''major threat'' to West Asia stability and said there was little prospect of engaging Tehran in efforts to end bloodshed in Iraq.

An American bipartisan panel, the Iraq Study Group, recently proposed engaging Iran and Syria to help stem violence in Iraq.

But US President George W Bush has shown no sign of changing his administration's policy of isolating the two states.

''I don't think there's any point us hiding the fact that Iran poses a major strategic threat for the cohesion of the entire region,'' Blair told a news conference.

''Iran is deliberately at the present time causing maximum problems for moderate governments and for ourselves in the region - in Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq,'' he said.

Blair, who will visit the West Asia soon, had also suggested talking to Iran and Syria on Iraq, but only if they stopped supporting terrorism and if Tehran ended its nuclear programme that the West sees as a cover for an atomic bomb.

Blair said there was little point in either country being involved in a regional push to help Iraq unless they were prepared to be constructive.

''I look around the region at the moment and everything that Iran is doing is negative,'' the prime minister added.

Blair, however, did stress that Syria and Iran should not be viewed as one: ''I think the two of these countries are different.'' Blair recently sent his top foreign policy advisor to Damascus to offer Syria what he called a ''strategic choice'' on cooperating with the international community and ending its support for terrorism or continuing to be isolated.

Blair said it was ''shocking beyond belief'' that Iran had organised an international conference questioning the holocaust and had invited a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

REUTERS

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