BELGIUM: NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana pay tribute to outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana praise Tony Blair's leadership of the United Kingdom hours after he announced he was bowing out. European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana described outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "a very important leader", not only for Britain, but throughout the world. Speaking in Brussels Solana paid tribute to Blair, who is bowing out next month after a decade in power. He paid particular attention to Blair's recent success in Northern Ireland which this week saw the return of a power-sharing Stormont government. Solana said: "He leaves in a very important moment for his country, the situation of Northern Ireland has been resolved and I'm sure he feels happy having spent so much time to resolve that problem." NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also praised Blair's leadership hours after he announced he was bowing out. Scheffer admitted that his decision to go to war in Iraq contributed to a deep split within Europe and the NATO Alliance but defended his choice to stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. It was at a NATO summit in 1997, the year he was voted Prime Minister, that Blair said that his was the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live out entire lives without going to war or sending our children into conflict. Despite the travails Blair's administration have suffered for joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, De Hoop Scheffer denied this showed the British premier had failed. He said that the world had changed and that Blair was a leader of considerable standing. "Tony Blair was a leader with a capital L, not a politician who looks at opinion polls first and decides what he is going to do but a leader who leads and I think for me that is the most important feature I could mention about Tony Blair," de Hoop Scheffer said.

ITN Source | May 11, 2007

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