Protest agains Britain's decision to renews its nuclear arsenal

LONDON, Mar 12: A member of the government resigned today in protest against plans to renew Britain's nuclear arsenal and Prime Minister Tony Blair fought to quell a growing rebellion in his party over the issue.

''I am confirming that I have resigned from the government with a heavy heart but a clear conscience,'' Nigel Griffiths, deputy leader of the lower house of parliament, told BBC News 24 television after handing in his resignation letter.

Several ministerial aides may join Griffiths in quitting over plans to replace Britain's Trident nuclear-armed submarines with a new system costing up to 20 billion pounds, according to British newspapers.

Parliament is set to vote on the plan on Wednesday and the rebellion in the ruling Labour Party is such that Blair will have to rely on support from the opposition Conservatives to push through the proposal.

Blair, due to step down in a few months after a decade in office, firmly asserts the need for Britain to retain nuclear weapons, arguing that new threats from Iran, North Korea or nuclear terrorists make it dangerous to abandon the deterrent.

But a deep hostility to nuclear weapons runs through the Labour Party, which espoused unilateral nuclear disarmament until the late 1980s.

Many Labour legislators think they are being rushed into a decision before Blair resigns, that there is no longer any justification for nuclear defences in a post-Cold War world and that the huge cost could be better spent elsewhere.

Almost two-thirds of Labour lawmakers who took part in a poll released yesterday opposed the plan.

Griffiths, 51, a member of parliament for Edinburgh for 20 years, said he would give the reasons for his resignation later in a statement to parliament.

Blair's office said only that it had received Griffiths's letter and would ''acknowledge it in due course''.

Blair has a majority of 67 in the 646-seat lower house, according to the parliamentary website, and must depend on support from the Conservatives -- most of whom favour updating Britain's nuclear arsenal -- to pass the plan.

Reliance on Conservative votes on a key defence issue would be another sign of Blair's crumbling authority, analysts say.

The new submarines would enable Britain to keep a nuclear arsenal into the 2050s, replacing existing nuclear submarines which are due to go out of service in around 2024.

Reuters