He told yesterday's conference, organised by the John Smith Foundation, set up in memory of the ex-Labour leader: "Progressive politics is about avoiding false choices. You don't have to choose between the environment and the economy.

"You don't have to choose between success at work and success at home; you don't have to choose between business and workers. It's all about avoiding false choices. That's why I'm a friend of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown."

But his remarks coincided with a new phase in the brittle relationship between Mr Brown and Mr Blair, which has been thrown in to its latest crisis by the Prime Minister's remarks in Australia, where he said it might have been a mistake to say that he would leave office before the next election.

The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, will come under pressure today to secure a date for a changeover in Downing Street. He will meet senior backbench MPs, who will echo the remarks made by Jon Trickett at the Labour MPs' weekly meeting that the Government is being weakened by confusion over Mr Blair's departure date.

"It was the first crack in the wall of silence on this issue," said one officer of Labour's backbenches. "The feeling is that Tony cannot go on until 2008. We are paralysed while Tony remains in charge."

In his speech at the Guildhall, Mr Clinton praised Mr Brown for what he called "your wondrous leadership of the economy and the Treasury, and your continued effort to find responses to the challenges of globalisation at home and abroad."

He added: "I've seen people say Labour is getting a bit long in the tooth. But if you live where I live and you look across the Atlantic, it does not look that way. You should see yourselves as others do.

"And ... I see a strong economy, fiscal responsibility, investment and low unemployment where the reverse is true in my country. I see you committed to fight global warming, in stark contrast to the policies in the US. So you should lighten up: you're doing really well. And if you went across the Atlantic and saw what was happening there, you'd think you were doing pretty well."

His comments were seen by Mr Brown's supporters as evidence that the Chancellor is as much an international figure as Mr Blair. Alarm bells rang in the Brown camp over the weekend when Mr Blair seemed to be implying that he was going back on his promise to stand down before the next election.

Blair allies, such as the former Cabinet ministers Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers, have started challenging Mr Brown on issues that they say he will have to confront, either as Chancellor or Prime Minister, such as tax rates for the very low paid.

Mr Milburn hinted that Mr Brown should cut the 10p tax rate introduced by Labour in 1999, "so that we can spring more people from the poverty trap."

Comment: Um, the occupation of Iraq didn't occur because the Pentagon alone was pushing for it. It happened because Bush decided to invade, come hell or high water. Real change needs to start at the very top.

"We're uniting behind a national security agenda that is tough and smart and will provide the real security
George Bush has promised but failed to deliver," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday.

His counterpart in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said the Democrats are offering a new direction - "one that is strong and smart, which understands the challenges America faces in a post 9/11 world, and one that demonstrates that Democrats are the party of real national security."

The latest in a series of party policy statements for 2006, the Democrats' national security platform comes seven months before voters decide who will control the House and Senate and as Democrats seek to cut into the public perception that the Republicans are stronger on national security.

Bush's job approval ratings are in the mid- to high-30s, and Democrats consistently have about a 10-point lead over Republicans when people are asked who they want to see in control of Congress.

With the public skeptical of the Iraq war and Republicans and Democrats alike questioning Bush's war policies, Democrats aim to force Republicans to distance themselves from Bush on Iraq and national security or rubber-stamp what Democrats contend is a failed policy.

"The Democrats are going to take back the security issue," said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Republicans have vowed not to let that happen. They characterized the Democrats' platform as tough election-year talk that isn't backed up by the party's record.

"This is more of the same from the party that opposes this president's effort to keep our country safe," said Tracey Schmitt, a
Republican National Committee spokeswoman. "The bottom line is while this president campaigns against the terrorists, Democrats remain focused on campaigning against this president."

Overall, the Democratic position paper attempts to make the case that the Bush administration's "inadequate planning and incompetent policies have failed to make Americas as safe as we should be."

It covers party policy positions on homeland security, the war on terror, the military, Iraq and energy security, but it contains many of the same proposals Democrats have offered over the past year.

The platform also lacks specific details of how Democrats plan to capture bin Laden, the al-Qaida mastermind who has evaded U.S. forces in the more than four years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For months, House and Senate Democrats have tried to craft a comprehensive position on national security, but they have splintered, primarily over Iraq.

Republicans have sought to use that division to their own political advantage, claiming that Democrats simply attack the president and his fellow Republicans without presenting proposals of their own.

On the eve of his death penalty trial last month, Moussaoui met with prosecutors and offered to testify for them in exchange for better jail conditions before he was put to death, jurors were told late yesterday. The al-Qaeda operative withdrew the offer when he realized he had the right to testify on his own behalf and when prosecutors insisted that he also tell them about other terrorist plots.

"Have you ever heard of a defendant in a capital case offering to testify against himself?" defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. asked an FBI agent who took the stand after the news was revealed to the jury.

"No, not in my experience," said agent James M. Fitzgerald.

It was the latest bizarre turn in a trial that is expected to go to the jury today. Before defense attorneys rested their case that Moussaoui is not eligible for the death penalty, jurors heard testimony that one of Moussaoui's terrorist bosses thought he was "not right in the head" -- and that several disputed Moussaoui's testimony that he was supposed to crash a hijacked airplane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001.

In an effort to save Moussaoui's life, his attorneys ended their case by trying to discredit their client. They told jurors that Moussaoui had said the opposite when he pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda, insisting then that he was "not 9/11 material."

Prosecutors responded by coming to the defense of Moussaoui, whom they have been trying to execute over his role in the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. They introduced evidence of the meeting Moussaoui requested four days before jury selection began in the trial.

Moussaoui, whose attorneys have vehemently objected to allowing him to take the stand, said he would testify for prosecutors about his plan to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House. In exchange for incriminating himself, he did not ask that his life be spared.

"He wanted better jail time between the time he was given a death sentence and the time he was executed," Fitzgerald told jurors. He said the meeting, described as civil, ended when prosecutors told Moussaoui he had an "absolute" constitutional right to testify.

It was unclear how jurors, some of whom were taking notes as they left the courtroom, would view the development. Prosecutors hope it reinforces that Moussaoui was telling the truth when he testified about his role because he would have told prosecutors the same thing. Moussaoui's defense appeared to be trying to signal to jurors that Moussaoui is untrustworthy and cannot be believed.

Moussaoui testified Monday that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane Sept. 11 and attack the White House with a crew that included Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber." He also admitted to a key part of the government's case: that he had lied to the FBI when arrested in August 2001 to allow the Sept. 11 plot to go forward.

Even the judge indicated that Moussaoui's testimony may resonate with the jury. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who threw out the death penalty in the case in 2003 before being overruled, declined a defense motion yesterday to toss it again.

"This case changed dramatically with Mr. Moussaoui's testimony," Brinkema said out of the presence of jurors.

Defense attorneys spent much of yesterday trying to overcome the damage Moussaoui had done to his case with his testimony. Even if Moussaoui was telling the truth about his role, his admissions did not address a fundamental part of the government's case -- that Sept. 11 could have been thwarted if Moussaoui had told the truth. Defense lawyers tried to hammer that point home -- that the government had plenty of warnings but could not stop it -- to the jury yesterday before resting their case.

Closing arguments are scheduled for this afternoon. If jurors find Moussaoui eligible for death, a second phase of the trial will determine whether he will be executed. Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty last year and is the only person convicted in the United States on charges stemming from Sept. 11.

In trying to overcome the image of Moussaoui calmly telling jurors Monday how he wants every American to die and rejoiced about the Sept. 11 attacks, defense attorneys returned to one of their core arguments. They introduced more evidence showing that the government could not stop the attacks, despite all the warnings, because of a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set. The defense argues that Moussaoui's information about the plot would not have helped.

Moussaoui's defense read into the record portions of the July 2001 "Phoenix memo," written by an FBI agent in Arizona, warning of suspicious individuals taking flight training in the United States, as the Sept. 11 hijackers did. The memo was not shared with the CIA or aviation and immigration authorities, and it generated little interest among top FBI officials.

The defense also showed the jury videotaped portions of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. At one point, Rice was asked by a commissioner whether Moussaoui's information could have helped stop the attacks, as prosecutors have argued at the trial.

"I do not believe it is a good analysis to go back and presume that somehow we would have gotten lucky by going back and shaking the trees," Rice said. Prosecutors have argued that if Moussaoui had told the FBI about al-Qaeda's plans, the FBI would have scrambled and alerted federal aviation officials, who would have boosted security at the nation's airports.

The captured al-Qaeda members whose testimony was read to the jury did not speak highly of Moussaoui. Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, who is known as Hambali and was the chief strategist for a South Asian terror group with ties to al-Qaeda, said he worked with Moussaoui in Malaysia in 2000 and believed he was "very troubled, not right in the head."

Hambali, who was captured in 2003, told interrogators that Moussaoui "managed to annoy everyone he came in contact with." That drew a smile from Moussaoui, who otherwise did not visibly react to the testimony.

Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the financial and travel planner for Osama bin Laden's organization, said he saw Moussaoui at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan but never helped him with flight arrangements to the United States -- as he did for the other hijackers who brought down the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and crashed a plane into a field in Pennsylvania.

The statements, which were read to the jury by defense attorneys, climaxed a court battle that delayed the case for more than two years. Brinkema granted Moussaoui's lawyers access to a number of al-Qaeda detainees they said could help his defense. The government refused to produce them, for national security reasons, and a federal appeals court eventually said the detainees would not testify.

Instead, the court said, the statements they gave to interrogators would be read to the jury.

Despite the failure of the United Nations Security Council to reach any agreement on how to deal with Iran's nuclear programs at last week's meeting, the foreign secretary maintained that there was a "growing international consensus in the face of Iran's intransigence."

Straw acknowledged that it would be "hard-going" to secure the backing of all Security Council members for a resolution against Iran. However, he hoped it would be possible to agree "the next step" when the five permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- and Germany met in Berlin Thursday, he said.

Countries had "different interests" in Iran, he continued, alluding to Russia's $1 billion contract to build Iran's first atomic reactor at Bushehr and China's heavy reliance on Iranian oil exports for its energy supplies.

Both countries have so far rejected punitive action against the Islamic Republic, fearing that sanctions, economic or otherwise, could harm such interests.

Straw said there were also "anxieties, which we have to acknowledge, as to whether the strategy which the European Three are following with the backing of the United States is going to lead to the possibility of "another Iraq."

"So that's why it takes time."

But, he insisted: "As to the possibility of this being 'another Iraq,' it won't.

"I don't regard military action as appropriate or indeed conceivable."

However, there appears to be a split within the British government over the efficacy of retaining the threat of military force.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Feb. 7 he could not rule out the possibility of taking military action against Iran over its nuclear programs.

During questioning by a committee of senior parliamentarians, Blair said that while military action was "not on the agenda," he could "never say never."

Senior Foreign Office officials also appear keen to preserve the military option. A government memo reported by the Times of London last week suggested that Britain was pressing for a U.N. resolution that would pave the way for sanctions or possible force against Iran should it fail to halt its nuclear program.

The letter detailed a strategy to persuade Russia and China to back a Chapter VII resolution that would require the United Nations to act should Tehran refuse to comply.

Despite the insistence of the foreign secretary just three days earlier that military action was "inconceivable," the letter, written by Foreign Office Political Director John Sawyers on March 16, recommended "more serious measures."

"(The Iranians) will need to know that more serious measures are likely," Sawyers wrote to his U.S., German and French counterparts. "This means putting the Iran dossier on to a Chapter VII basis."

He suggested making a suspension of all uranium enrichment by Tehran "a mandatory requirement of the Security Council, in a resolution we would aim to adopt, I say, early May."

Sawyers, who served as Britain's envoy to Iraq following the 2003 invasion, recommended a dual strategy in order to persuade Russia and China to sign up to the resolution.

"We are not going to bring the Russians and Chinese to accept significant sanctions over the coming months, certainly not without further efforts to bring the Iranians around," he wrote.

"In parallel with agreeing a new proposal, we will also want to bind Russia and China into agreeing to further measures that will be taken by the Security Council should the Iranians fail to engage positively."

In light of such reports, Moscow and Beijing will be wary that British assurances that military action is not on the agenda are simply aimed at persuading them to sign up to a strongly-worded resolution.

The United States has been unwilling to rule out the possibility of using force against Iran. While President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have insisted that they favor the diplomatic route to convince Iran to halt its nuclear programs, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has made clear he regards force as a serious option.

The following day, Bolton reportedly told a committee of British parliamentarians that Iran's nuclear program could be brought to a halt with carefully-targeted military strikes. "We can hit different points along the line," the envoy said, according to committee members present. "You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."

Tehran has threatened to retaliate should the United States choose to follow a military path against it.

He insisted Iran was being open about its nuclear activities but suggested that could change should it be threatened with military force. "Any threat or potential threat will create a very complicated situation," said Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and military strategy expert, told the same conference that Washington did not believe the Security Council would agree on a way forward, and was likely to make a "serious decision" on the military option before the November elections.

Any operation would take less than five days and probably involve Stealth bombers, he said, before adding that his analysis had led him to conclude it would not be successful.

Whether Britain would support such an operation is as yet unclear, where there is little enthusiasm for another military intervention in the Middle East and, following the Iraq debacle, a serious lack of trust in British and U.S. intelligence.

For now, the government appears to be performing a diplomatic balancing act, attempting to dispel fears of a rush to war while simultaneously preparing for it.

The poor economy, a main worry for voters in this election, has fed concerns about immigration by right-wing parties in Berlusconi's coalition, although the kind of work usually done by immigrants is shunned by many Italians. Surveys show that some Italians also perceive immigrants as being linked to crime.

"We don't want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country. We are proud of our traditions," Berlusconi said Monday on state-run radio.

Berlusconi's government has put in place a tough immigration policy, including legislation cracking down on illegal immigration. The 2002 law allows only immigrants with job contracts to obtain residency permit.

"We want to open (our borders) to foreigners who flee countries where their lives or liberties are at risk," said Berlusconi, adding those who come to Italy to work also are welcome. "We don't want to welcome all those who come here to bring about damage and danger to Italian citizens."

Thousands of illegal immigrants come to Italy every year, mostly crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa on rickety boats. The latest group of more than 200 landed Monday on Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily.

Most immigrants, if they elude police, move on to other European countries.

The Northern League, a right-wing anti-immigrant party, welcomed Berlusconi's remarks.

"Here's the Berlusconi we want," said Roberto Calderoli, a Northern League leader who was forced to quit as reforms minister last month after he wore a T-shirt on state TV decorated with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. "Our values, our identity, our history, our traditions" must be defended against immigration, the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.

Paolo Cento of the opposition Greens party criticized Berlusconi, saying "the multiethnic society is a reality and an asset that must be handled," ANSA said.