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LONDON - Senior clergymen have urged Tony Blair to make a full apology for Britain's role in the slave trade, instead of only expressing sorrow for the suffering it caused.
The Archbishop of the West Indies, who joined the Archbishops of Canterbury and York at a prayer service in London yesterday commemorating the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom, said the Prime Minister would be the appropriate person to deliver an apology, which, he insisted, would prevent human rights abuses in future.
Campaigners say the failure to apologise could overshadow plans for an annual day commemorating abolition.
Blair used a pre-recorded message to the British Council's commemorative event in Ghana yesterday to express his profound regrets at the inhumanity and degradation caused by what he has described as a crime against humanity.
Lady Valerie Amos, the Leader of the House of Lords, herself descended from slaves, described it as "one of the most shameful and uncomfortable chapters in British history".
The Prime Minister - who told a press conference with the Ghanaian President this month that he was "sorry" about what had happened - will however stop short of the formal apology that Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, is making on the capital's behalf this week.
The Archbishop of the West Indies, Drexel Gomez, said while there might appear to be only a "technical difference" between regrets and a full apology, the difference was important.
"An apology is in order because we have to acknowledge our past if we are to build our future," he told the BBC.
Downing St's position reflects concern that it is difficult for the current generation to apologise for wrongs done centuries ago by distant forebears, while apologies may also open the question of liability for reparation.
Amos, who is in Ghana for the event, also tackled criticism that the celebrations have focused too much on the role of one white man - William Wilberforce, the Tory MP who led the parliamentary anti-slavery movement - and not enough on the black resistance movement.
The anniversary of the 1807 legislation to abolish the slave trade has awakened comparisons with the maltreatment of ethnic minorities in Britain.
Yesterday the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, drew a parallel between the exploitation of Africans and the murder of teenager Anthony Walker, killed with an axe as he ran away from racist thugs in the city.
Jones told a congregation at Liverpool Cathedral that the more he studied history, "the more I believe that our racism is rooted in the dehumanising treatment of black people by white people".
"We need to repent and to keep on repenting, setting our faces against the racism that both destroys and dehumanises other people."
- OBSERVER
