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LONDON: News of a miscarriage suffered by the wife of former British
Prime Minister Tony Blair was used to stave off speculation of an
early invasion of Iraq, she said in comments printed in newspapers
Monday.
Cherie Blair said that as she lay in pain and
bleeding back in 2002, Blair and his communications chief Alastair
Campbell told her they were going public immediately so that a delay
in their family holiday did not trigger false speculation of an
invasion.
She said the press announcement was made for
political reasons.
The Blairs had been planning to go on holiday in
France. When she told her husband, he told family members, then
Campbell.
Tony Blair and Campbell then called Cherie to
tell her there were implications in not going on holiday.
There had been talk of troops being sent into
Iraq and if the Blairs did not go on holiday it might send out the
wrong signals that something was about to happen.
The pair had decided, therefore, to tell the
media about her miscarriage.
“I couldn’t believe it. There I was,
bleeding, and they were talking about what was going to be the line
to the press. I put down the receiver and lay there staring at the
ceiling as pain began to grip.”
Blair said she was overwhelmed by the sense of
loss.
The high-profile lawyer, in excerpts from her
autobiography serialized in The Times and The Sun, said she could
not believe the way the news was handled.
She also said that their son Leo, eight later
this month and by far the youngest of their four children, was
conceived while the couple was staying with Queen Elizabeth II.
When she discovered she was pregnant again in
2002 at the age of 47, Cherie Blair was “astonished”.
“Leo’s birth has seemed like a miracle and
here I was nearly three years older,” she said.
Only their children and Leo’s nanny were told.
-- AFP
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