By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 27, 2006

LONDON, May 26 -- George Galloway, a member of Parliament and fierce critic of the U.S. and British role in the Iraq war, said Friday that he understood how someone angry about the war could find it "morally justifiable" to kill Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"From the point of view of someone who has seen their country invaded and their family blown apart, it's possible, of course, for them to construct a moral justification," Galloway said in a statement published on the Web site of his Respect party. "But I've made my position clear. I would not support anyone seeking to assassinate the prime minister."

A Blair spokesman, traveling with the prime minister in Washington, said Blair had no comment. "We may think a lot about it, but we're not going to say anything about it," the spokesman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity as is standard practice here.

Galloway has emerged as one of the most controversial politicians in Britain since being thrown out of Blair's Labor Party in 2003 for urging British troops to refuse to fight in Iraq.

Galloway is perhaps best known in Washington for his appearance in May 2005 before a U.S. Senate committee investigating allegations that he profited in the United Nations oil-for-food program, in which Iraq was allowed to sell oil under U.N. supervision. Galloway used the appearance to make a theatrical and fiery denunciation of the U.S. justification for the Iraq war as a "pack of lies."

Galloway is seen as an eccentric radical by many members of the British political establishment but commands respect in the largely Muslim constituency in London he represents in Parliament.

His reputation among critics reached new lows this year when he appeared on "Celebrity Big Brother," a reality television show, and crawled on all fours pretending to be a cat and licking imaginary milk out of the cupped hands of another cast member.

Galloway's comments Friday, when he was reportedly traveling in Cuba, came in response to questions over an upcoming interview in GQ magazine, in which he is quoted as saying an assassination attempt on Blair "would be entirely logical and explicable -- and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did."

"I respect the guy for speaking up for the oppressed," said Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, which advocates Muslim involvement in the democratic process. "But I don't think this particular thing does much for the cause."