The Former British PM Tony Blair has admitted ‘mistakes’ and conflict’s role in rise of Islamic State but defends armed intervention in Iraq in 2003.

Tony Blair has moved to prepare the ground for the publication of the Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war by offering a qualified apology for the use of misleading intelligence and the failure to prepare for the aftermath of the invasion.

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, the former British prime minister declined to apologise for the war itself and defended armed intervention in Iraq in 2003, pointing to the current civil war in Syria to highlight the dangers of inaction.

Blair, who will be aware of what Chilcot is planning to say about him in the long-awaited report into the Iraq war, moved to pre-empt its criticisms in an interview with CNN. He told Zakaria: “I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong.

“I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.” Unfortunately,  Mr. Blair is  one of the Presidential advisors of the Rwandan Head of State who has not only butchered his own people but has gone further changing the Constitution so that he can seek another term after his term expires in 2017.

Ironically Mr. Blair had previously supported President Kagame as a man of vision for his country and initially he believed that the Rwandan Head State would relinquish power peacefully for the first time in the Rwandan history. Blair has described Rwanda’s president as a “visionary leader” and a friend after making the central African country the focus of the work of his charity, the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI).

Mistakenly or unknowingly, Blair said allowances have to be made for the consequences of the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and suggested that Kagame’s economic record outweighed other concerns. Does Mr. Blair now realize and understand that this narrative is wrong as Kagame has suppressed more Tutsis than President Habyarimana? Does he recognize that President Kagame has killed even those who supported his RPF during the Four year Bush struggle that ended with Genocide of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus?

The UN report has accused Kagame’s forces of war crimes, including possibly genocide, in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo, indeed, now Kagame is meddling in the neighboring Burundi where tens of thousands have been killed and armed rebellion is planed and funded by the Kagame regime.

As I have said above the Rwandan government is increasingly becoming authoritarian after Kagame manipulated the parliament to change the Constitution to cement his long stay in power. The constructive opposition in Rwanda is effectively barred from challenging Kagame or RPF in any form and is likely that the presidential elections in 2017 will be a one man show as has been in the previous elections.

The White House has criticised Kagame for the suppression of political activity and made clear that it does not regard Rwanda as democratic. But the Obama Administration has failed to pressure the Rwandan dictator to allow free speech and free flow of political ideas that are ideologically different from the ruling party RPF.

For many years, Kagame, has enjoyed the support of prominent leaders including Bill Clinton who called him “one of the greatest leaders of our time” – amid continuing guilt over the major powers’ failure to stop the murder of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus and out of simplistic belief that he had brought relative stability to a troubled region. Mr. Blair is very good at twisting words, he rolled his eyes at mention of the UN report on Rwanda, which he questions, and suggested that Rwanda’s occupation of eastern Congo for many years was justified by the continuing threat from Hutu extremists.

“He (Kagame) and I specifically discussed this,” Blair said. “They [the Rwandan government] very strongly push back against the allegations that are made.

“You’ve got to understand that it’s a very difficult situation in Congo because you’ve got the rival forces fighting each other and that’s spilling across into his territory.”

Again this is not true because the international independent human rights groups have been documenting such crimes for years and have concluded that Kagame has illegally invaded his vast neighboring nation for his personal gain. Why then Mr. Blair cannot reconsider his relationship with the most notorious dictator on the continent where the police can shoot and kill with impunity innocent civilians because they are trying to resist the local authority from demolishing their property.

Please Mr. Blair don’t wait for another chaos and loss of life and you make more apology when it’s too little and too late, better be warned that Rwanda is leading to the long Road  to Hell.

Jacqueline Umurungi

Brussels.