Britain must not turn its back on the world as a result of the controversy over the Iraq War, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said.
Mr Miliband told the Chilcot Inquiry it was important not to learn the "wrong lesson" from the conflict and to decide to leave international engagement to other countries. He also argued that the authority of the United Nations would have been badly damaged if the UK and the US had not followed through threats to Saddam Hussein with military action.
The Foreign Secretary admitted that the March 2003 invasion of Iraq exposed "divisions" in the international community.
But he insisted the UN would have been damaged if the conflict had not gone ahead. Mr Miliband told the inquiry: "I think it's very important that we don't learn the wrong lesson, and the wrong lesson, it seems to me, is that Britain should leave international engagement to others, that the world is just so complicated and so dangerous that we are better off retreating into ourselves.
"There is an argument about whether or not medium-sized countries should think of themselves as global players. And I think it's going to be an argument that is more and more pressing in the months and years ahead because of the temptations for politicians - never mind those concerned with the finances - to rein us in."
He added: "We mustn't be a country that turns our back on the world because if we do, because of the hard decisions that we are faced with, we will be much poorer in all senses of that term."
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth strongly defended Gordon Brown over his claim that he had provided the armed forces with all the equipment they needed for operations in Iraq. Mr Ainsworth hit back at one of Mr Brown's critics, the former chief of the defence staff, General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, saying that he appeared to "have an issue" with the Prime Minister.
Lord Guthrie was one of a number of former senior military figures to speak out after Mr Brown's appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday where he insisted he was not aware of any requests for additional equipment being turned down when he was chancellor.
His evidence was dismissed as "disingenuous" by Lord Guthrie, but Mr Ainsworth insisted that once the funds had been allocated to the Ministry of Defence, it was not for the chancellor to decide how they were spent.
"Lord Guthrie appears to have an issue with the Prime Minister. I don't know what is the reason for that. I know of no request (that was turned down)," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One. "It is not for the chancellor of the exchequer to decide in detail how the money is spent that he allocates to defence. That is a matter for the defence secretary of the day and the MoD to decide."
