BRIGHTON, England (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair was set to face the anger of rank and file members of his Labour Party over the Iraq war, as party officials tried to head off a motion calling for British troops to quit the country.
The last day of Labour's annual conference in the southern English resort of Brighton was shaping up to be the most uncomfortable for Blair, who has already seen Iraq dominate a gathering intended to re-focus attention onto domestic issues.
A pair of motions about the war from local Labour branches were scheduled to be debated Thursday morning, giving delegates a chance to vent the frustration many feel over Blair's decision to back last year's US-led invasion.
More worrying was the prospect that the conference could be asked to vote on whether to back both motions -- especially as one calls for Blair to set an early date by which British troops should be pulled out of Iraq.
If passed, such a motion would not bind the government in any way, but it would amount to a public humiliation for a prime minister aiming to win a third term in office at a general election widely expected in 2005.
The timing would be even more unfortunate given that voters in northeast England were turning out Thursday in a crucial by-election to replace Peter Mandelson, a Blair ally who quit parliament to become EU trade commissioner.
Labour officials spent much of Wednesday trying to secure the support of the influential trade union bloc at the conference to see off the prospect of a vote on the motions, a trade union source told AFP.
One possibility was that a statement on the current situation in Iraq prepared by senior Labour members would be read out to the conference and discussed instead, the party said.
"It is not a statement of new policy or an alteration of the UK government's position," a party spokesman said on Wednesday.
"It is a statement of fact about the basis on which UK troops remain in Iraq."
The prominence of Iraq has scuppered Blair's hopes to use the conference as a pre-election springboard to boast at length about Labour's achievements in domestic arenas such as health, education and anti-crime measures.
Instead he was forced to use a key section of his main conference speech on Tuesday to re-state his belief the war was right, while also conceding that Saddam Hussein's regime had not possessed any useable weapons of mass destruction.
Public attention has also been keenly focused on the terrible plight of Kenneth Bigley, a British engineer kidnapped in Baghdad by Islamic militants two weeks ago, whose execution was at one point expected almost daily.
On Wednesday, a video was released showing an exhausted-looking and unshaven Bigley sitting apparently manacled in a small cage, accusing Blair of "lying" about his possible release.
"Tony Blair is lying... He is lying when he says he is negotiating... He is not negotiating... My life is cheap... He doesn't care about me," Bigley was heard saying before his voice became choked with tears.
Blair said he had been "sickened" by the videotape broadcast on satellite news channel Al-Jazeera, adding that Britain would respond immediately to any contact from the kidnappers.