"He's wearing his black uniform and his New Balance tennis shoes as he moves to this white pickup," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. "And his close associates around him . . . do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves. It makes you wonder."

Lynch aired the clips during a news conference in which he described efforts to destroy Zarqawi's group. He said five raids in Iraq in the last month had killed 31 suspected foreign insurgents and that 161 al-Qaeda leaders had been killed or captured since January 2005.

Lynch said the latest raids had netted "lots of stuff," including printouts of Google Earth satellite images of certain areas -- such as the prison at Abu Ghraib -- and the unedited version of the Zarqawi video.

The briefing also focused on the larger issue of what U.S. strategists believe is Zarqawi's long-term goal: to overthrow the new Iraqi government by touching off a war between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs and establish an Islamic theocracy.

"He is clearly trying to drive a wedge between the sectarian populations in Iraq," Lynch said of Zarqawi, a Sunni Arab from Jordan. "He knows that democracy equals failure -- he knows that the government is about to form."

To accomplish this, Lynch said, Zarqawi was funneling his resources -- men, money and weapons -- into Baghdad, in an effort to kill as many Shiites as possible. But U.S. forces are tracking him down, Lynch said.

U.S. commanders blame Zarqawi for many high-profile attacks in Iraq, including the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22 that provoked a bloody wave of sectarian killing.

The hunt for Zarqawi sparked panic in Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar, where residents believed that he filmed the video to bolster support for Iraq's insurgent movement and threaten its foes.

The rumor, based on background details in two scenes of the video, caused hundreds of people to flee east toward Baghdad, fearing that U.S. and Iraqi troops would level the city in order to kill or capture Zarqawi.

"About 170 families left Ramadi in the first four hours of the work day" after the video appeared, said Muhammed Rifat, the manager of the main bus station in the city. "It is like a tornado or a storm warning, and people are trying to avoid it and leave before it happens."

He said that he would leave, too, because he feared residents of Ramadi would face the same fate as those of Fallujah, a former headquarters for Zarqawi that was cordoned off and targeted during a massive U.S. offensive in 2004.

Residents said Zarqawi appeared to be consulting a map of Ramadi in one of the video's scenes. They also said they believed that the scene in which he is seen firing a machine gun shows a railroad track that runs near the city in the background.

"I've heard some conjecture of that type, but not through official channels," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, said when asked of the rumors. "We don't have any interest in pinpointing any areas in the video. Clearly, we do our own intelligence gathering."

U.S. commanders have not announced any major operations in the city, which lies 60 miles west of Baghdad, since the video appeared.

On Thursday, military authorities said that Marines in Ramadi who came under fire from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades called in a strike from what the military said was a "ground-launched precision-guided munition," killing eight suspected insurgents.

A car bomb also exploded near a Baghdad courthouse on Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 50, police Lt. Mahmoud Karim said. Gunmen and bombings killed at least six other Iraqis around the country, according to police.

Judge Leonie Brinkema refuted Moussaoui's boast Wednesday that "America, you lost, I won!" after a jury decided to spare his life.

"Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want," Brinkema said.

"You will spend the rest of your life in a super-max prison. It's absolutely clear who won."

Federal prosecutors had called for the death penalty for Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent.

"Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory," Brinkema said. "but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper."

Moussaoui tried to interrupt Brinkema, declaring: "God save Osama bin Laden - you will never get him."

Moussaoui's sentence follows a conviction on charges of being a member of al-Qaeda and conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers. He pleaded guilty last year to terrorism conspiracy.

It was October last year when we came home, flicked on the radio and listened aghast to the news that the Iranian president denied the Holocaust had happened and said the state of Israel should be wiped off the map. 'Christ,' we thought, 'this nut job's playing into their hands with this kind of rhetoric.' Since then "the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion" as one US academic has described the Iran/US imbroglio has ratcheted up to high alert with Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker reporting that the White House is all prepared for nuclear strikes. It would take just 12 hours to deploy nuclear weapons for a bunker busting strike that would kill a million Iranians according to conservative estimates commissioned by the Pentagon. Nuclear armed planes are now on constant alert and public opinion has been framed around those mad, mad statements on Israel by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But what if the pronouncements by Ahmadinejad that cast him as this season's baddie incarnate had been a) mistranslated and b) taken out of context?

When properly translated the Iranian president actually calls for the removal of the regimes that are in power in Israel and in the USA as a goal for the future. Nowhere does he demand the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He called for greater governance for Palestine. The word map does not even feature. And the president makes plain that the Holocaust happened, but, he argues western powers have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialistic purposes. What the mainstream ran with is complete deception.

The deception has been aided by the fact that much of the media use an 'independent' company called Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) for translating Middle Eastern languages. Memri just happens to be owned by two right-wing neo-con Israelis: Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of Dick Cheney's aides (and ex-special assistant to 'Strap-on' John Bolton), David Wurmser and former(?) Israeli Military Intelligence officer, Colonel Yigal Carmon. Indeed a look at Wikipedia' s incomplete staff list seems to suggest a heavy Israeli bias in staffing and at least two more ex-Israeli Military Intelligence people. Still the little red email is sure that's just a coincidence, as is the fact that the Israeli army (presumably military intelligence) has also used this mistranslation tactic in the past.

And once Ahmadinejad had been brushed with the wacko Jew destroyer tag, it was a short hop, skip and ein Sprung before he was alongside Adolf Hitler in the pantheon of baddies. Like Milosevic and Hussein before him, Ahmadinejad's Hitler comparison is as sure a sign war is imminent.

Unlike Hitler though Ahmadinejad doesn't rule Iran, nor does he control its foreign or military policy. The man in charge of all that is Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is a theocracy, and Khamenei is the theocrat-in-chief. To give you an idea of where Ahmadinejad lies in Iran's political hierarchy, note that no one can even run for the presidency in the first place without the approval of Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a group of six clerics and six conservative jurists that are selected by Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad serves the purpose of being a believable bogeyman. He'll find his Ph.D. in civil engineering and being a founding member of the Iran Tunnel Society useful if Seymour Hersch's bunker-busting nuke allegations come true.

"We have made no such announcements. In such an important and serious area like nuclear non-proliferation, we can make a decision only based on the opinions of experts," Lavrov told reporters.

"The inspections that have been held in Iran do not allow us to conclude that Iran has the technology to create weapons of mass destruction. But on the other hand, these inspections do not allow us to make the opposition conclusion."

He spoke a day after discussion started between the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- over a resolution demanding Iran curb its nuclear ambitions.

Britain, France and Germany, which are sponsoring the Council resolution, want it adopted by Monday and were due to meet again on Friday to push the case forward.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged Tehran would keep up its uranium enrichment because it wanted to produce enough fuel to power its own atomic power stations.

Speaking to a regional conference in the Azeri capital Baku, he repeated the Islamic Republic's view that its nuclear program was being undertaken in full accordance with international law and was open to international checks.

Iran has said it wants a negotiated end to the dispute but rejects calls to freeze enrichment, which Washington thinks is a prelude to producing nuclear weapons.

"We are set on continuing our path to industrial production of nuclear fuel for our nuclear power stations in line with international regulations and under the supervision of the IAEA (U.N. nuclear watchdog)," said Ahmadinejad, in a copy of the speech given to reporters.

Russia has previously opposed sanctions against Tehran, saying they would be counterproductive.

Paul Pillar, a former
CIA analyst specialising in counter-terrorism in the Middle East and Asia, said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais that the United States had particularly wanted to prove a link between Al-Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein.

"That was not the case," he was quoted as saying. "I suppose by some definitions that could be called a lie."

"There was an organised campaign of manipulation," El Pais also quoted Pillar as saying. "That would be the proper way to define it."

The decision to invade Iraq was taken as early as the beginning of 2002, a year before hostilities began, Pillar said.

It was decided "for other reasons and did not depend on weapons of mass destruction or the results of
United Nations inspections," he said, according to the interview published in Spanish.

"As far as weapons of mass destruction were concerned, there was a generally false perception in the American, British and other intelligence services that Iraq possessed these. We were wrong."

"The problem was the wider message, the attempt to spread the impression that there was a terrorist alliance between Iraq and Al-Qaeda," Pillar was also quoted as saying.

The theory of the link interested the government of
President George W. Bush because "it was this that most strongly affected public opinion in the United States, and which would keep alive the images of September 11, 2001.

"The administration's voracious appetite to obtain material about this non-existent alliance cost a great deal of time and work to senior intelligence staff and the most highly experienced analysts in the CIA," Pillar said in the interview.

Acutely aware of this, the US is leaning heavily on Pakistan, its key ally in the "war on terror" in the region, to go on the offensive against the strong Taliban foothold in the North and South Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

What the US is asking for, in effect, is a Tora Bora-style aerial bombing of the area, similar to that undertaken in the mountains of that name in Afghanistan during the rout of the Taliban five years ago. (Incidentally, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora long before the bombs began to fall.)

The Taliban are integrated into the local population and there would be high civilian casualties. This is considered acceptable as civilians would be deemed Taliban sympathizers.

According to highly placed officials who spoke to Asia Times Online, the Pakistani military has already drawn up a blueprint for such an attack, which could be implemented in the near future.

In response, the Taliban, along with al-Qaeda, have a counter-plan in which they will go on the offensive, and an extensive network is primed to launch attacks on the Pakistani establishment.

This is the first time since the fall of the Taliban that the al-Qaeda leadership has activated Pakistani jihadis all over the country for operations both inside and outside the country.

The effect of this is illustrated by an incident in Kandahar, Afghanistan, recently in which three suicide bombers were arrested after they failed to detonate their devices because of technical problems.

All three were from the Pakistani port city of Karachi. Detailed investigations at the Kandahar military base by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed a network starting from a book shop in Karachi, going on to a contact in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province in Pakistan, and then on to Chaman in the same province. From there the three men launched their attack in Kandahar.

These arrests spotlight just one of many powerful networks established across Pakistan to carry out jihadi activities on a scale that has not existed since the fall of the Taliban.

This is reinforced by a recent broadcast by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's No 2, in which he called on Pakistanis to topple President General Pervez Musharraf, calling him "a bribe-taking, treacherous criminal". He especially asked the Pakistani army to mutiny against Musharraf.

Zawahiri made a similar broadcast in 2003, but a lot has changed since then. At that time, the Taliban were bruised and down, scattered and without central leadership. Al-Qaeda was also on the run, its network in a shambles, and survival was the only issue. Broadcasts by bin Laden and Zawahiri had only two purposes: to keep the morale of the jihadis high and to sow uncertainty in the ranks of the rival camp.

Both aims were achieved. Each message kept the jihadis spiritually connected with their leadership, and opponents were kept guessing about the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Soon after Zawahiri's call, a number of assassination attempts were made on Musharraf's life, with the complicity of sections within the armed forces.

In the meantime, al-Qaeda began to develop its "netwar" strategy - a complex organization of cells and groups. While Zawahiri continued his broadcasts, bin Laden disappeared from the scene.

To keep thousands of inactive jihadis in Pakistan involved and to bring them into al-Qaeda's net, various methods were used, including the distribution of training manuals, motivational compact discs and action clips of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

At the same time, al-Qaeda and the Taliban established a foothold in North Waziristan, renaming it the "Islamic State of North Waziristan" and seizing virtual control of the area. Jihadis were invited to the base, which has expanded to parts of South Waziristan and neighboring villages in Afghanistan.

This was in preparation for the Taliban's powerful spring offensive, which is now under way, directed toward Kabul as well as Islamabad.

The sudden emergence of bin Laden in a broadcast this month was a global message to the jihadi movement, urging them to come to the base (Waziristan) as a new "war" had begun, of which the spring offensive is the first major salvo.

This was followed by Zawahiri's call to do battle against Musharraf. Unlike in 2003, the jihadis are now much better organized to take on the Pakistani establishment.

The situation is now dangerously poised. Musharraf, under US pressure, is prepared for an all-out attack on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. At the same time, the military rulers are well aware of the renewed strength of the jihadis, and are extremely reluctant to go for the "final solution" and all it would involve.

Asia Times Online contacts claim that in this explosive environment, some sort of a compromise deal, as in the past, might be worked out, with both sides agreeing to back off for the time being. In such an eventuality, the only winners would be the Taliban and al-Qaeda: they can only go from strength to strength, and they will not give up on their ultimate goal of toppling the administrations in Kabul and Islamabad.

Zawahiri's message for Pakistan
The following are translated excerpts from a broadcast by Ayman al-Zawahiri that was aired on Arabic television last weekend.

... As for the second thing I wish to talk to you about, it is the dark fate toward which the traitor Musharraf is pushing Pakistan. Without a doubt, Pakistan is one of the most important of the countries targeted by this new colonialist crusade which seeks to weaken Pakistan and fragment it into entities under the control of India, which is allied with the Americans and Jews.

And here I wish to clarify an extremely important point, which is that the anti-Islamic American/Crusader/Zionist plan has no place for the presence of Pakistan as a strong, powerful, able state in South Asia, because this plan doesn't forgive Pakistan for separating from India in the name of Islam, and doesn't forgive it for including the largest Islamic schools with wide influence among the Muslims of South and Central Asia, and doesn't forgive it for the flourishing of the popular jihadi movements in it against the Indians in Kashmir and first the Russians and then the Americans in Afghanistan, and doesn't forgive it the favorable response of its people, scholars, students, mujahideen and tribes to the Islamic emirate in Afghanistan - since its founding and to this very day - and to its amir the lion of Islam, Mullah Mohammed Omar, may Allah protect him, and doesn't forgive it its overwhelming public sympathy for the call of Sheikh Osama bin Ladin for jihad to expel the Americans and Jews from the holy places of the Muslims and their homes.

In this context, India appears to be the best candidate to implement the Zionist/Crusader plan to humiliate Pakistan and weaken it and tear it apart. And [President George W] Bush's recent visit to Pakistan at the beginning of March was one of the biggest pieces of evidence of that, as he gave a strong push to India's nuclear program, while handing out orders and instructions in Pakistan. And I will review with you in brief just a few of the many woes and misfortunes which Musharraf and his supporters have brought on Pakistan.

The first of these woes is Musharraf's combating of Islam in Pakistan. With an order from the Crusaders, he provided all the backing needed to expel the Islamic emirate from Kabul. And he has made war on the Islamic schools, and is seeking to review the Hudood Act related to rape], in addition to inventing - with Crusader guidance - a new Qadiani creed which invites the people to an Islam without jihad and without enjoining of good and prohibition of evil and without observation of the rules of the sharia, which he calls "Enlightened Moderation".

The second of these woes is Musharraf's threat to Pakistani national security. Musharraf was the primary backer of the ouster of the Islamic emirate from Kabul, and was the primary reason for the establishment of a government in Kabul allied to America and India and hostile to Pakistan. And as a result of Musharraf's betrayal, Indian intelligence has crept close to the Pakistani-Afghan border and opened its consulates in the cities adjacent to Pakistan. And the Pakistani army, with the exit of the Taliban government from Kabul, became a double loser: first, the Pakistani army lost the strategic depth which Afghanistan, with its highlands and mountains, can offer it in any Pakistani-Indian confrontation. And second, the Pakistani army's back became exposed to a regime hostile to it and allied with its enemies. And if you add to this India's success in exploiting air bases in Tajikistan and its seeking military cooperation with the Central Asian states, you will realize the extent of the predicament which the Pakistani army has gotten itself into.

And Musharraf is the one who placed the Pakistani nuclear program under American - and hence Jewish and Indian - supervision. Musharraf exploited America's accusation of Abdul Qadeer Khan [father of Pakistan's nuclear program] to impose its surveillance on the Pakistani nuclear program. And then is it credible that Abdul Qadeer Khan was outside the surveillance of Pakistani military intelligence? Thus the first ones who should be brought to trial in the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan are the leaders of the Pakistani army and intelligence. But Abdul Qadeer Khan was used as a scapegoat to please America.

And Musharraf is the one who is fanning the flames of civil war in Pakistan on behalf of America, in Waziristan and Balochistan, in a bloody conflict whose losses have no end, and which will only rebound on Pakistan with the worst of damages. The worst thing any army in the world could wish for is that it be assigned to defend the borders of its country at a time when it is embroiled in an internal civil war. Pakistani memory has yet to forget the catastrophe caused by the civil war in East Pakistan [that led to the creation of Bangladesh]. And what Musharraf has done in Bajaur, Waziristan and Balochistan he will repeat in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, and indeed, any place the Americans request him to strike.

And Musharraf is the one who is seeking to change the combat doctrine of the Pakistani army by repeating that the real danger to Pakistan is from within and not foreign: ie, he is inciting the Pakistani army to fight its people and brothers and turn a blind eye to the Indian threat. And if the combat doctrine of any army becomes corrupted, and its fighting turns into fighting for the sake of salary and position alone, then this army will run away from the battlefield whenever fighting breaks out.

And how is it possible for the Pakistani officer or soldier to be persuaded that he is defending Islam when he is the one who enabled the Americans to kill tens of thousands of Muslims in Afghanistan, and enabled them to oust the Islamic emirate from Kabul? And how is it possible for the Pakistani officer or soldier to be persuaded that he is defending the sanctity of Pakistanis when his commanders order him to kill women and children in his own country? And how is it possible for the Pakistani officer or soldier to be persuaded that he is defending the honor and dignity of Pakistan when he sees his leaders order him to carry out a new slaughter every time they are visited by a high-ranking American official?

The third of these woes is Musharraf's squandering of the issue of Kashmir and his painstaking effort to dispose of it at any cost. Musharraf is the one who strangled the jihadi resistance against India, which led it to increase its savagery and draw up the borders. And Musharraf is the one who made and continues to make one concession after another in the Kashmir issue, even as India hasn't budged one step from its stance. And Musharraf is the one who seeks to deceive the Muslim ummah [community] in Pakistan by pretending to them that the problem with India will be resolved with confidence-building measures, in order to neutralize the effort to liberate Kashmir, which is the real problem between Pakistan and India.

And Musharraf is the one who wars against the Arab mujahideen and their brothers from all corners of the Islamic world, who represent one of the most important weapons in the liberation of Kashmir, in the same way that they contributed before to the liberation of Afghanistan from the Russians. And Musharraf is the one who brought American military and intelligence forces to Kashmir under the pretext of helping the victims of the earthquake. They came in under this cover and commenced to strengthen their defenses and fortifications in order to establish permanent Crusader bases on the Pakistani-Indian border.

The fourth of these woes is Musharraf's recognition of Israel, to prepare the Pakistanis psychologically to recognize a Hindu state in Kashmir. The fifth of these woes is his affront to Pakistani dignity and sovereignty when he gave free reign to American intelligence and investigative agencies in Pakistan, and turned Pakistan's army and security services into hunting dogs at the service of the Crusaders.

The sixth of these woes is his corruption of political life in Pakistan. Through bribery and election fraud, Musharraf declared himself president and formed a party of bribe-takers and opportunists which he provided with a parliamentary majority, and distributed to them and the rest of his supporters the country's treasures, which he had seized, even though he is the same one who claimed at the beginning of his rule that he came to combat fiscal corruption in Pakistan.

And the West, which claims to defend democracy, was hostile to Musharraf at the outset of his rule, but later did a U-turn in admiration of him and his treachery, and indeed, today encourages him to stay in power by any means, after he demonstrated his aptitude for killing Muslims. Musharraf's real problem is bribery. And Musharraf reckons that his success in procuring wealth will only be achieved by betraying Pakistan and appeasing America and throwing himself at its feet.

But he forgets the other half of the reality, which is that America tosses its agents into the rubbish bin when there is no longer any need for them. And were he to look across his western borders, he would see the fate of the shah [of Iran] bearing witness to that, when they ordered him to leave Iran, and then deprived him of asylum and indeed, even medical treatment, which he only found with his friend the bribe-taker Anwar Sadat [of Egypt].

And in keeping with Musharraf's worship of wealth and his mad dash for bribes, he tries to persuade the Pakistani people that they must take care of their interests without paying attention to any moral or religious considerations. This is the same logic of drug dealers, white-slavery gangs, spies and traitors, and the outcome of this attitude is the loss of this world and the next. Allah the Exalted says, "Satan threatens you with poverty and bids you to immorality, while Allah promises you His forgiveness and bounties, and Allah cares for all and He knows all things." - Al-Baqarah 2:268.

I address the Pakistani people, to call on them to stand today in the ranks of Islam against the Zionist/Crusader assault on the Islamic ummah and on Pakistan, and I call on them to strive in earnest to topple this bribe-taking, treacherous criminal, and to back their brothers the mujahideen in Afghanistan with everything they have until they defeat the plan of the Crusaders and Zionists allied with India.

I also call the Pakistani army's attention to the dismal fate which awaits them in this life and the other, for the Pakistani army has turned into forces aligned under Bush's cross in his crusade against Islam and Muslims, just as it has become a tool in the destruction and tearing apart of Pakistan. Let every soldier and officer in the Pakistani army know that Allah has threatened anyone who allies himself with the infidels against the Muslims with a painful punishment. Allah the Exalted says, "To the hypocrites give the good tidings that there is for them a grievous chastisement; those who take for friends unbelievers rather than believers: Is it honor they seek among them? Nay, all honor is with Allah." - Al-Nisa 4:138-139.

And let every soldier and officer in the Pakistani army know that Musharraf is throwing them into the burner of civil war in exchange for the bribes which he took from the Americans, and that he doesn't care if 10,000 or 20,000 Pakistani troops are killed, as long as his pockets are full of bribes. And let them know that Musharraf has made preparations to flee abroad - where he has his secret accounts - on the victory of the popular revolution.

For this reason, I call on every officer and soldier in the Pakistani army to disobey the orders of his commanders to kill Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or otherwise he will be confronted by the mujahideen who repelled the British and Russians before. The Truth - Exalted is He - says, "Say to those who have disbelieved, if they cease [from disbelief], their past will be forgiven. But if they return [thereto], then the examples of those [punished] before them have already preceded [as a warning]. And fight them until there is no more fitnah [disbelief and polytheism] and the religion will all be for Allah alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease [worshipping others besides Allah], then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do. And if they turn away, then know that Allah is your maula [patron, lord, protector and supporter] - [what] an excellent maula, and [what] an excellent helper." -

"I felt that it was very difficult, given the level of genuine public concern, for Charles to continue'' as home secretary, said Blair, who days earlier had defended Clarke as the right man to deal with the prisoner issue.

Clarke said he had turned down offers of other government posts. ''I do not think it would be appropriate to remain in this government in these circumstances,'' Clarke said in a statement.

Straw's demotion was a surprise.

But there had long been rumors of tension between Straw and Blair - some reports said the outgoing foreign secretary had private expressed doubts about the Iraq war, and he publicly took a different tack on Iran than Blair did. Straw frequently described military action against Tehran as ''inconceivable'' and the reported U.S. contingency plans for a tactical nuclear strike as ''completely nuts.''

The shake-up appeared aimed at demonstrating Blair still holds a firm grip on his beleaguered government after weeks of negative headlines and scandal.

The government's acknowledgment last week that officials had failed to screen 1,023 foreign criminals for deportation before freeing them from prison in the past seven years was particularly damaging to Blair.

''It'll take far more than a reshuffle,'' Conservative Party leader David Cameron said. ''What we need in this country is a replacement of the government.''

''I think what we have seen over the last few hours is that while the Labour Party is collapsing, the Conservative Party is building,'' Cameron said as he toured London to celebrate his party's gains in the local elections.

Glenda Jackson, a former Labour government minister who has been a persistent Blair critic, joined the calls for him to go. ''The problem for the party and its government is its leader,'' she said.