Photo: Elke Wetzig/Wikipedia

File photo: Desmond Tutu. Tutu's withdrawal from the Discovery Leadership Summit may prove a critical moment in the build-up of pressure on international governments and the institutions of international justice to pay attention to the movement calling for Blair's prosecution for war crimes.

London — Following Archbishop Desmond Tutu's decision to pull out of this week's Discovery Leadership Summit in Johannesburg, the Office of Tony Blair released the following statement:

"Obviously Tony Blair is sorry that the Archbishop has decided to pull out now from an event that has been fixed for months and where he and the Archbishop were never actually sharing a platform.

"As far as Iraq is concerned they have always disagreed about removing Saddam by force - such disagreement is part of a healthy democracy.

"As for the morality of that decision we have recently had both the memorial of the Halabja massacre where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam's use of chemical weapons; and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million including many killed by chemical weapons.

"So these decisions are never easy morally or politically".