LONDON (AFP) - The family of a British soldier killed in Iraq stormed out of a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair s deputy, saying they blamed the premier personally for the death. Rose Gentle and her teenage daughter travelled to Downing Street to deliver a letter to Blair, who is currently out of the country on holiday, expressing their anguish at the death of 19-year-old Gordon Gentle.
A roadside bomb claimed Fusilier Gentle's life on June 28 in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
His mother and sister were unexpectedly invited to meet Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott when they arrived to deliver their letter, but the discussion lasted only minutes, Rose Gentle said.
Prescott apologised for the fact it had taken seven weeks for Blair to write a letter of condolence to the family over the death, Gentle said, but she dismissed the rest of the meeting as a waste of time.
"I then walked out. He was just talking a lot of rubbish," she said.
The mother has demanded that Britain withdraw all its soldiers from Iraq, and has accused the government of sending her teenage son to the country too soon after he had completed basic training.
The family delivered a letter from 14-year-old Maxine Gentle calling Blair a "bad prime minister" and blaming him personally for her brother's death.
The US-led conflict in Iraq was "not our war", and was instead "a war over oil and money", the teenager said.
"But I don't just blame Gordon's death on the Iraqis that made the roadside bomb, I blame you as well because it is your fault that our soldiers are over there in the first place," she wrote.
Blair, who is currently holidaying as the guest of his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, has seen his popularity badly hit after deciding to back last year's war on the basis of Baghdad's supposed stocks of unconventional weapons.