TONY Blair has paid tribute to Henry Kissinger, who has died at the age of 100, praising the polarising former US diplomat as an “artist”.
The former prime minister said he met the former secretary of state when he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and was “struggling to form views on foreign policy”.
Kissinger served as former president Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and as secretary of state – the American equivalent of the foreign secretary.
He is a hugely controversial figure, having had considerable sway over US foreign policy at key points in the Cold War.
Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow, estimated that Kissinger’s actions while in post from 1969 to 1976 resulted in three to four million deaths.
Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine – which branded the former politician a “notorious war criminal” – Grandin said: “The Cubans say there is no evil that lasts a hundred years, and Kissinger is making a run to prove them wrong.”
Blair paid tribute to Kissinger (below) following the announcement of his death on Thursday, saying he had been in “awe” when around the statesman.
He said: “The range of his knowledge, the insights which would tumble out of him effortlessly, the lucidity, the mastery of the English language which made him a joy to listen to on any subject, and above all the ability to take all the different elements of the most complex diplomatic challenge and weave from them something astonishing in its coherence and completeness, and, most unusual of all, leading to an answer and not just an analysis: no one could do that like Henry.
READ MORE: Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger dies aged 100
“If it is possible for diplomacy, at its highest level, to be a form of art, Henry was an artist.”
Blair (below) – who is also considered by his critics to be a war criminal for invading Iraq – defended Kissinger as someone who was motivated by “a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it”.
He added: “He was a problem-solver, whether in respect of the Cold War, the Middle East or China and its rise. And not once did he ever stop thinking about the future, reflecting on it and proffering wisdom upon it, most recently on the technology revolution.
“I consider it one of the greatest privileges of my political life to have known him. From that first moment of meeting him to the last, he inspired me and taught me and I will forever be grateful to him.”
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Blair's decision to bring Britain into the Iraq War was condemned as "illegal" by the UN in 2004 and the Chilcot Report, published in 2016, said it was "unjustified".
Kissinger’s critics accuse him of deliberately prolonging the Vietnam War for his own political ends.
He was also instrumental in the expansion of that conflict into Cambodia through a secret bombing campaign which critics say paved the way for the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in that country.
Kissinger also supported Nixon’s efforts to encourage a military coup against the democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973, which resulted in the authoritarian dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
But Kissinger’s defenders will point to his efforts to relax the strained relationship between the US and the Soviet Union and opening up relations with China.
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