London, England - Tony Blair yesterday said he backed a council which suspended a Muslim classroom assistant for refusing to remove her veil, as part of what he described as a difficult but necessary debate about how Islam integrates into British society and the modern world. The prime minister said the niqab worn by some Muslim women was "a mark of separation and that is why it makes other people from outside of the community feel uncomfortable" - words likely to anger some religious leaders.
Asked if it was possible for a woman wearing a veil to make a full contribution to British society, Mr Blair said it was "a very difficult question ... no one wants to say that people don't have the right to do it. That is to take it too far. But I think we need to confront this issue about how we integrate people properly into our society.
"All the evidence is that when people do integrate more, they achieve more as well. It's a very, very sensitive issue; all I'm saying is we need to have this debate about integration. I'm not saying anyone should be forced to do anything."
Mr Blair said he could "see the reason" why Kirklees council had suspended Aishah Azmi, a teaching assistant at Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
Ms Azmi has taken the council to an employment tribunal and Mr Blair said he was mindful of that. He did not go as far as the communities minister, Phil Woolas, in calling for her to be sacked. But he said he "fully" supported Kirklees. "I simply say that I back their handling of the case. I can see the reason why they came to the decision they did." Last night Ms Azmi's lawyer said he was considering taking an injunction against Mr Blair to stop him saying more about the case.
The prime minister said Ms Azmi's case, along with Jack Straw's decision to ask women to remove their veils in his constituency surgeries and the row over British Airways' ban on a staff member wearing a cross, were part of a broader debate which was "happening in a very haphazard way".
The debate was about the degree of integration by Muslims, and - within the Muslim community itself - about "how Islam comes to terms with and is comfortable with the modern world".
The debate had begun long before ministers contributed and was going on in different forms across the developed world - in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark - as well as in Kuwait and other parts of the Middle East.
Downing Street said later that ministers had not engineered the debate, but nor could they shy away from it. "It isn't just a debate that affects Muslims, it's also a debate which affects non-Muslims," the prime minister's official spokesman said. "You can't just put your head in the sand and say these issues don't exist."
In the first of his monthly press conferences since the September revolt in Labour ranks which saw him announce his departure within a year, Mr Blair was not asked any questions about how long he intended to stay in office. After presentations from the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, and David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, on health service reform he said reports of up to 20,000 job losses in the NHS were way out and the true figure for compulsory redundancies would be closer to a "few hundred".
In answer to several questions about comments by General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, last week, that the presence of British forces in Iraq exacerbated violence, he insisted that both he and the military believed their contribution was helpful.