British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday he would quit within a year but refused to give an exact date to placate Labour Party mutineers who want a speedy change of leader to revive their fortunes.
He said that this month's conference of Britain's ruling party would be his last as leader.
But in a televised statement, he said: "I'm not going to set a precise date now, I don't think that's right. I will do that at a future date and I'll do it in the interests of the country."
His finance minister and expected successor Gordon Brown, eager to heal damaging divisions in the ruling party, said earlier he would support Blair's decision.
Brown, whose relationship with Blair has at times been strained over the years, stressed that it was for the embattled premier to decide when to go.
Blair's popularity has tumbled in opinion polls after government scandals over sleaze and misman-agement were compounded by controversy over the wars in Iraq and Lebanon. Some former supporters urgently want a change at the top.
Labour holds its annual conference later this month in the northern English city of Manchester and party members had been clamoring to know whether it will be Blair's last.
Blair has ruled the country for almost a decade and won three consecutive elections but with support quickly ebbing away, some members of his party have begun to see him as an electoral liability.
With party colleagues running scared about Blair's growing unpopularity and losing their jobs at the next election, a junior minister and seven government aides quit on Wednesday after calling on him to step down now.
Tom Watson, a junior defense minister, was one of 17 Labour lawmakers who signed a letter to Blair this week saying it was not "in the interest of either the party or the country" for the prime minister to stay in office.
The fast-moving developments -- for some recalling the way Margaret Thatcher was brought down by her Conservative Party in 1990 -- came after the Sun newspaper reported that Blair planned to stand down as prime minister in July.
Resignations were just one part of a chaotic day in Westminster, the heart of British politics, as Blair reportedly clashed heatedly with his heir apparent, finance minister Brown, in two face-to-face meetings.
Brown demanded that Blair resign quickly enough for his successor to be in place by May, which the prime minister dismissed as "totally unreasonable," the Independent daily reported.
It said Brown also demanded that Blair publicly endorse Brown's leadership bid, and instigate a system of "co-decision" under which the chancellor would be able to veto key policy decisions until Blair's successor was in place.
The two apparently engaged in a shouting match, and the Guardian reported that Blair authorized the use of the word "blackmail" by his staff to describe Brown's actions.
The meetings ended with no agreement over how to proceed, it said.
Meanwhile, one of Blair's key allies, Environment Secretary David Miliband, himself considered a leadership candidate by some, seemed to rule himself out of a race for Blair's job and supported Brown as Labour's next leader.
"I'm neither a runner nor a rider for any of the contests," Miliband told the New Statesman magazine.
Blair had already pledged he will not stand at the next election, expected in 2009.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS