Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday he had not expected the ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq, but insisted British troops would stay as long as the Iraqi government needed them. As his governing Labour Party gathered for its annual conference, Blair said he had not set a deadline to withdraw some 8,500 British soldiers from Iraq. "There is no arbitrary date being set," he said, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. Blair also insisted that two British soldiers who were rescued from an Iraqi jail last week would not be handed over to Iraqi authorities.
