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.
"Many people of my generation and younger grew up doubting whether we should ever see another straightforward international conflict, fought by a standing army with conventional weapons," said Williams, who has in the past criticized the 2003 invasion of Iraq as "flawed."
Blair, who took the decision for Britain to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the US in the conflict, looked solemn as he listened to the archbishop's address.
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.
Williams said politicians and the media had failed to consider the true cost of the Iraq war and used "overblown language" to justify it.
"Perhaps we have learnt something, if only that there is a time to keep silence, a time to let go of the satisfyingly overblown language that is so tempting to human beings when war is in the air," said the archbishop.
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 British military lives lost so far in the Afghanistan conflict.
Unconfirmed reports Friday said that Britain could send up to 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan as a result of the strategic review of the conflict currently under way in Washington, London and other capitals.
Brown is expected to make a statement to parliament on the issue next Wednesday. Britain currently has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan.
