David Miliband promised a new chapter in foreign policy yesterday, as he admitted that Britain bore the “scars” of mistakes that were made during Tony Blair’s decade as Prime Minister.

The Foreign Secretary referred repeatedly to learning the lessons from British diplomacy over the past ten years, the biggest of which was that military action was never a solution in itself.

“With the successes but also the scars of ten years in government, we have to learn the right lessons and address the new issues,” he told Labour delegates in Bournemouth.

He conceded that errors had been made in Iraq and gave a stark warning that rivalry between Sunnis and Shias could fragment the country and spread across the Middle East unless Britain worked with its neighbours to reconcile the two sides.

Referring to Mr Blair’s military interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Iraq, Mr Miliband told the Labour conference: “While we have won the wars, it’s been harder to win the peace.

“The lesson is that while there are military victories, there never is a military ‘solution’. There is only military action that creates the space for economic and political life. The war in Iraq was divisive in our party and in our country. It was a huge decision and the passion on all sides was sincere and understandable. But whatever the rights and wrongs, and there have been both, we have got to focus on the future.”

Mr Miliband added: “We need to work with all the neighbours of Iraq to reconcile Sunnis and Shias, to prevent that conflict first fragmenting Iraq and then spreading like a contagion across the Middle East.”

The underlying lesson, he said, was that good intentions were not enough to ensure a peaceful solution. He described meeting educated young Muslims in Pakistan who were convinced that Britain and the West wanted to dominate them rather than to empower them.

Britain must continue to reach out to moderate Muslims, bringing Turkey into the European Union, supporting democracy in Pakistan and Afghanistan and pressing for Palestinians to have their own state to stop al-Qaeda from using their plight as an excuse for violence, he said.

Mr Miliband also used his speech to appeal for restraint from Burma’s military leaders in the face of mounting protests, telling the conference: “The situation there is tense. The world wants to see restraint from the authorities.”

He said: “Wasn’t it brilliant to see Aung San Suu Kyi alive and well outside her house last week? It will be a hundred times better when she takes her rightful place as the elected leader of a free and democratic Burma.”

The Foreign Secretary also appealed to those Labour MPs, unions and activists who were pressing for a referendum of the European Union’s reform treaty not to risk creating party disunity as again he ruled out putting the treaty to a vote of the people. “Europe needs to look out, not in, to the problems beyond its borders that define insecurity within our borders,” he said.

“It doesn’t need institutional navel-gazing and that is why the reform treaty abandons fundamental constitutional reform and offers clear protections for national sovereignty. It should be studied and passed by Parliament.”

Referring to the way in which the Conservative Party split over Maastricht during the leadership of John Major, he said: “Europe has divided them for 15 years and it’s not going to divide us.”

Mr Miliband admitted that Britain’s relationships with both Europe and the United States were less popular after Labour’s ten years in office. He defended both but did not mention President Bush by name, saying that both were “permanent commitments, beyond individual personalities”.

He said: “Some want distance from America. Others want distance from Europe. The Tories want divorce from both. But those are the wrong lessons.

We share core values with America. It has more power for good than any nation in the world.”

He called for bodies such as the United Nations to redefine global rules so that countries such as Burma and Zimbabwe felt that it was better to play by the rules than to ignore them.

In a conscious break from the Blair era, Mr Miliband also spoke of a “second wave of new Labour foreign policy”. He said: “Yes, it’s tempting to lower our sights. But in progressive politics we must always be restless for change. And that means we have to be restless about the future, not the past.

“Who says in ten years’ time we will not have turned back the inexorable rise in global emissions? Who says in ten years’ time every child in the world won’t be at school? Who says in ten years’ time, there can’t be a democratic and respected Iran, cooperating with us and the international community against global terrorism?”

— Britain would support permanent seats on the United Nations’ security council for Brazil, India, Japan and South Africa, Mr Miliband said last night, but there was no question of Britain surrending its own permanent seat in exchange for an EU one, he told Newsnight on BBC2.

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