Difficult days ahead as troops near capital, Blair warns

Tony Blair warned yesterday of "difficult days ahead" as he braced the British people for a crucial battle when Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard tries to block the road to Baghdad.

In a statement to MPs, the Prime Minister sought to staunch a haemorrhage of public support for military action after the losses, setbacks and delays suffered by Allied troops in recent days. Although opinion polls taken since the conflict show wider support for the war, ministers fear it could melt away if the fighting drags on longer than expected.

Mr Blair told a sombre Commons that the American X Corps was now about 60 miles south of Baghdad, near Karbala. "It is a little way from there that they will encounter the Medina Division of the Republic Guard who are defending the route to Baghdad. This will plainly be a crucial moment." He said thousands of Iraqi soldiers had surrendered, and more had simply left the field. "But there are those, closest to Saddam, that are resisting and will resist strongly. They are the elite that are hated by the local population and have little to lose. There are bound, therefore, to be difficult days ahead, but the strategy and its timing are proceeding according to plan."

Mr Blair appealed to the British people to put in context the television pictures of the war. "There are, of course, difficulties that have arisen, tragedies and accidents. We grieve for the lives lost. That is the nature of war. And it is in the nature of today's instant, live reporting of war, that people see the pain and the blood in vivid and shocking terms." He said it was also worth recalling the nature of an Iraqi nation degraded and brutalised by decades of barbarous rule. The Prime Minister said the Al Faw peninsula was "secure" and the port of Umm Qasr was under Allied control despite pockets of resistance, but in Basra pockets of President Saddam's most fiercely loyal forces were holding out.

"The vital goal is to reach Baghdad as swiftly as possible, thus bringing the end of the regime closer," he said. "Saddam will go, this regime will be replaced. The Iraqi people will be helped to a better future ... That we will encounter more difficulties and anxious moments in the days ahead is certain. But no less certain, and indeed more so, is coalition victory."

Replying to a question by Iain Duncan Smith about the state of the Iraqi regime, Mr Blair said the Government did not know for certain whether the man who appeared in yesterday's television broadcast as Saddam Hussein was the real Iraqi leader. The Prime Minister said some of the recordings appear to be dated, but conceded that there was not "an exact science in this" so concrete confirmation was difficult.

Alice Mahon, the anti-war Labour MP for Halifax, asked how Mr Blair's pledge to minimise civilian casualties could be squared with the bombing of women and children in Basra. She cited television pictures showing "a child with half its head blown out".

Mr Blair came under pressure from some MPs, including the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, asking for the United Nations to play a crucial role in the reconstruction of Iraq. The Prime Minister said it was important for the UN to be "fully involved".

He added that lessons must be learnt from the shooting down of an RAF Tornado by a US Patriot missile. "We must ensure it does not happen again," he said.

Paying tribute to the British and US servicemen killed so far in the conflict, Mr Blair said: "We owe them an immense debt." He described Terry Lloyd, the ITV News reporter who was killed in Iraq, as "a brave and distinguished correspondent," adding: "It is true that these people run considerable risks in trying to inform the outside world of what is happening."