Desmond Tutu pulls out of seminar in Tony Blair protest

Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has withdrawn from a seminar in South Africa this week in protest against the presence of former prime minister Tony Blair and his support for war in Iraq.

His spokesman said: “The archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair’s decision to support the United States’ military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible.”

Mr Blair strongly supported president George Bush as he launched a “war on terror”, sending British troops to Afghanistan in 2001 and, more controversially, to Iraq in 2003.

Mr Tutu won the Nobel prize in 1984 for speaking out against apartheid in South Africa and remains a prominent campaigner for peace and human rights.

A spokesman for Mr Blair’s office in London said he was “sorry” that Archbishop Tutu had decided to pull out of the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg.