LONDON, Feb 27: Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday accepted his responsibility for the situation in Iraq but refused to own what he said the deaths of innocent people who he insisted were being killed by terrorists.

Answering questions at his regular monthly press briefing at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister said that he would not take the responsibility of the deaths of innocent people being killed by terrorists and “those who want to subvert the will of the majority of the people of Iraq who want a peaceful non-sectarian state.”

He was asked why he had never expressed a sense of responsibility and regretted over what had gone wrong in Iraq.

The prime minister said the situation in Iraq was difficult for all the reasons that “we know but I don’t regret getting rid of Saddam Hussain. I think it was the right thing to do.”

Blaming squarely the elusive terrorists for the continuous carnage in Iraq, Mr Blair said: “The moment we start saying that it was our fault that the terrorists are killing people then we actually are echoing the arguments of the terrorist.”

When suggested as part of the invading force the UK must share part of the blame for the Iraqi situation because things went from bad to worse in Iraq as the Iraqi police, its civil service, its army and the rest were sent home by the invading forces, Mr Blair said that he did take the responsibility for what is happening in Iraq, “and that is why we are there, but that is not saying that what the terrorists are doing is really our fault.”

He said the idea that you could have left Saddam’s police in-charge of the law and order was a ‘far-fetched’ one.

Answering a question on Iran, he said the current policy of those who want to stop Iran from pursuing a ‘non-peaceful’ nuclear goal was the right one and implied that nothing could be gained by trying to engage Tehran in negotiations before Iran agrees to stop what it is doing.

He said the answer lies in putting a unified global pressure on Iran.

Mr Blair refused to take seriously the recent polls which showed the fortunes of both his leadership and that of his party going down the hill, saying that on several occasions in the past the voters did exactly the opposite of that the polls had said and that polls mid-way through a government’s term did fluctuate, therefore, in his opinion, there was nothing to worry about.

In his opening remarks, the prime minister gave a detailed response to the rising criticism in recent weeks that the UK was facing a serious social breakdown crisis and that it had happened during his ten-year tenure.

He tried to prove with illustrations, graphs and data that more people were out of poverty today than ten years ago and that the issue was not of general poverty but that of the plight of a small group of people who despite all the efforts by the government had been left behind and “it is this group we must target and improve its lot.”