London, Dec. 8: It is not only what Harold Pinter said ? calling for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes ? but the highly theatrical manner in which his Nobel Prize acceptance speech was delivered yesterday that turned the occasion into one to remember.

The 75-year-old playwright, who has had an operation for cancer of the throat and was re-admitted to hospital 10 days ago, recorded his speech ? a powerful indictment of the Iraq war ? in a London studio on Sunday.

Framed in a wheelchair with a rug over his knees, the frail man of letters spoke in a husky voice for over 45 minutes against the background of a flickering screen photograph of himself as a younger man. It was as though this was a passage from one of his darker plays and Pinter, the dramatist, milked every minute of it. Sometimes, he halted, possibly for more effect.

Supporters of the Iraq war ? and they are in a dwindling minority in Britain ? will, no doubt, dismiss what may prove to be Pinter’s final message to the world as a typical Left-wing rant. But it was a powerful, well-argued rant all the same, full of black humour and devastating, short, lethal sentences which will make it even harder for George W Bush and Tony Blair ever again to occupy the moral high ground, at least where the Iraq war is concerned.

This is what the Nobel Prize winner for literature this year had to say on the justification for the Iraq war:

“As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with al Qaida and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th, 2001.

“We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

“The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the US understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

“It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.”

It would be interesting to know why Pakistan got left out of Pinter’s list of dictatorships America has supported:

“The US supported and in many cases engendered every Right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War.

“I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the US inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. “Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the US have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.”