JACK Straw challenged opponents of the war in Iraq to face up to the consequences of failing to take military action.

But the Foreign Secretary accepted that the situation on the ground in the country now was difficult.

In his keynote speech to the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth yesterday, the Blackburn MP outlined the run up to the decision by Britain and the US to attack Saddam Hussein and made clear that it was the defiance of the United Nations not whether weapons of mass destruction could be unleashed in 45 minutes that was the trigger.

Mr Straw then confronted his critics in the conference hall saying: "I understand how controversial our decision to take military action has been.

"No decisions are graver than those of war. I respect those who took a different view. They did so for the best reasons.

"But just as we who took the decision for military action have to face up to the consequences in Iraq today, I also ask those who took the opposite view to acknowledge the likely consequences of their position if we had walked away from the decision that confronted us."

Mr Straw said there were three likely consequences of failure to act: "The authority of the UN would gravely have been weakened; Saddam would have been re-empowered and re-enboldened; the ferocity of his reign of terror on his own people would have increased."

He said: "I am in no doubt that the fall of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime was a just cause.

"We have helped liberate the people of Iraq from Saddam but liberating them from his brutal legacy will be longer and harder."