London - Britain Friday honoured the 179 soldiers who died during the Iraq war in a national memorial service attended by Queen Elizabeth II and past and present political leaders. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former prime minister Tony Blair and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani took part in the service in St Paul's Cathedral, joined by Iraq veterans and many of the relatives of the soldiers who died in the conflict.
In his address, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that Britain's involvement in the Iraq conflict was - and would remain - controversial.
"The conflict in Iraq will, for a long time yet, exercise the historians, the moralists, the international experts...It would be a very rash person who would feel able to say without hesitation, this was absolutely the right or the wrong thing to do, the right or the wrong place to be," said the Anglican Church leader.
A total of 120,00 British soldiers served in the six-year conflict, which began in March 2003 with the US-led invasion backed chiefly by Britain during the Blair premiership.
While the service was going on, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced the death of a British soldier in an explosion in Afghanistan's Helmand province, which brings to 221 the total number of lives lost so far in the Afghanistan conflict.
