Tony Blair finally condemned the manner of Saddam Hussein’s execution last night, describing it as unacceptable and wrong. It did not, however, excuse the crimes he committed against his people, the Prime Minister said.

Mr Blair, who has been criticised for delaying his denunciation of the way the death penalty was carried out, with lurid mobile phone images put on the internet, showed his impatience that the justified criticism might blur the memory of the horrors Saddam had perpetrated.

Speaking in Downing Street after talks with the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Blair said that the manner of the execution was completely wrong. But that should not “blind us to the crimes he committed against his own people”, he insisted, referring to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, one million casualties in the Iran-Iraq war and the use of chemical weapons against his own people.

“The crimes that Saddam committed does not excuse the manner of his execution but the manner of his execution does not excuse the crimes,” he said. “That is a sensible position that reasonable people would accept.”

There was some surprise last week that Mr Blair, after cutting short his holiday in Florida, did not take the opportunity to join the growing clamour against the way Saddam was shown going to his death.

His officials pointed out that he had not wanted to allow any remarks about the execution to overshadow his latest intervention in the attempt to reach a settlement in Northern Ireland.

But after Gordon Brown called the manner of the execution deplorable, Downing Street made plain that Mr Blair would be making a public statement on the issue.

He said last night: “As everybody saw, the manner of the execution was unacceptable and wrong. But we should not allow ourselves, while saying it was wrong, to lurch into the position of forgetting the victims of Saddam, the people he killed deliberately as an act of policy.”

The Iraqi dictator was put to death on December 30 after being convicted by an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity. Tensions were heightened after leaked footage showed him being taunted by guards as he was on the gallows.

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