Hello and a warm welcome to Dateline London.

Turning the Taliban - the international conference on Afghanistan promises money, jobs and possibly a share of power to end the war.

Tony Blair at the Iraq inquiry.

And the British supermarket chain which asks customers not to wear pyjamas when they go shopping.

My guests today are Stryker Maguire of Newsweek, Laura Lynch of Canada's CBC, Ashis Ray of The Times of India and David Aaronovitch of The Times of London.

There have been six major conferences on Afghanistan in the past eight years, but the London conference this week attracted representatives from 60 countries and offered a carrot as well as a stick - a 140 million dollar fund to help persuade the Taliban to give up fighting.

Will it work?

T you think this was a good idea, this confidence?

It is necessary.

Suddenly, the penny drops when you realise that we are actually and have been for some time, in a full and important war in Afghanistan.

Not in a counter insurgency situation, but in a fully fledged war.

How you conclude that war, how you win it in a satisfactory way, have become matters of, it not marginal urgency, but of central importance to the countries involved.

This conference brought together all the elements of the strategy, military, political, the notion of dividing the enemies up so that you can subtract their support.

Actually, every element of strategy was involved in the conference.

It was in some ways a very impressive thing.

The thing that interested me about this conference was, at last, it is not rocket science to think that it is better to offer people jobs and money if you can stop them shooting at you.

British soldiers have been saying this for years.

Yes, it could have happened earlier, because this process to achieve peace could have been in this seated much earlier.

But one needs to be wary, one needs to tread carefully, because it has not as easy as it looks, to achieve peace and integration in Afghanistan.

Certain things are absolutely clear.

The so-called moderates may have a motive in doing this, because there is a history in this country of people taking the money and going back to fighting, so we have to be careful about such things.

Also, the figure of 140 million has been watered down considerably from earlier ambitions, so the first year is going to be a trial.

To see if this really works, because there could also be elements who could exploit the situation.

There is obviously this situation where Pakistan has a vested interest in maintaining the Taliban as assets.

There has been a few that Pakistan once a week Afghanistan.

Be is a view in the military in Pakistan that the need the strategic depth of up than a Stan as if they want to control the country.

There is a certain amount of affinity between people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

There has to be some tribal affinity there.

But it is a situation where Pakistan has seen, as to their advantage, people Moby created the Taliban.

The military in Pakistan are hostile towards the Pakistani Taliban, but not towards the Taliban in Afghanistan.

They're not going to back down on pulling out.

There may be a shifting of its raw into that of a training capacity.

But Canada's response to this idea of paying the Taliban is that we need to think about it.

Canada tried this, they tried paying 4000 so-called Taliban back in 2006, and it sort of petered out over time.

That shows you how difficult something like this might be.

It may be the obvious idea, but the Taliban is not at the keys of structure.

There are factions, there is tribalism.

Someone at the top may want to do something, and someone at the bottom may want to do something completely different.

I do not think you should believe this is a solution, especially when it might be administered by a Government which is week.

They have not shown at a good deal of competence in using money wisely.

That is a good way to put it.

If you except David's arguments, what I would worry about is that goal posts have been moved.

The call it seems to be less about rebuilding Afghanistan then getting out of Afghanistan.

What I would worry about if I accepted those arguments would be, are we just going to pats it up enough so that beating get out of there, have a few elections, have some business growth and then pull out, or is this a permanent strategy?

Stryker Maguire is right, there is not a cheap option.

Anyone who begins to imagine that somehow or another this can be a cover so that we came get out and leave it in some kind of condition, is foolish.

I got a very different impression from the way our Foreign Secretary and others were talking.

They do see that.

We do not want go back to the state it was left in.

genuinely do believe this problem will come again and again.

Because you get burned by it.

One of the other lessons we can learn from the last 20 years is it is not just what you do that gets into trouble, it is very often what you do not do.

We do not want to learn it again in Afghanistan.

Absolutely.

The women of Afghanistan do not want to go through this again.

You're hearing from women who are at have now in what is a difficult political environment, and they're saying, do not let the Taliban get back into Government.

It will be operation far as all over again.

Not just women, but human rights groups have been advocating that one has to tread lightly.

A return of the Taliban in any Government situation, even where they have an influence over state affairs, is anathema for people who are fighting fire human rights.

I talk to the Foreign Secretary this week and he made it quite clear that both sides have to understand there is no military victory here.

The Americans, British and Canadians cannot when Miller Tadley, but neither can get Taliban.

If the realise, that will be an accommodation.

One thing is absolutely certain.

Peace and reconciliation is absolutely desirable.

There can be 02 opinions.

The question is how you achieve this.

There has to be a situation where the military operations continued and people are prepared for a long Hull.

But he's de makes it would be disastrous.

Things would go back to square one.

That is something neither Afghanistan nor the world can afford.

When it a ban announced a surge and talked about a date for any hope troops would come out, but without saying it was a certain date, it does become a date, because it is in the public mind.

It is a date certain, but it does not mean you cannot leave troops there, they might not be called combat troops.

We are already hearing the same thing about Iraq.

August is when all the combat troops are supposed to be out of there.

But there will be tens of thousands of American troops there, they will just not be called combat.

Tony Blair was questioned for six hours at the Iraq inquiry this week.

He discussed everything from the legality of the war to how views of the Iraqi threat changed after 9/11.

But did the inquiry really get anywhere?

What did you think of hearing the former prime Minister Question map for me, fascinating to see him back out there on the stage, doing the Tony Blair performance to a tee.

He does make other people look amateur.

Yes, I bet Gordon Brown was watching closely, because there is a contrast.

If anyone was looking for a catharsis, it sure they did not come for them.

It points out what are so many weaknesses of this inquiry.

Its scope is far too broad.

Tony Blair does not need to be questioned for six hours, he needs to be questioned for days on end, because there is so much for him to talk about.

They had to skip through things.

This points at the other problem, the commissioner, one of them as a lawyer, and I have seen many inquiries.

I have seen lawyers get into areas and find out information in those inquiries it was not available before, because they enter it into these things with a prosecutor reach zeal.

thing that struck me was if this was a top medal congressional inquiry, you might have Congress people there, but you would have won her to lawyers asking very direct questions and the would get answers, but this inquiry, the ask a question, they get an answer at the move on to something else.

By the end of the day, there was not much doubt as to who was in control of that inquiry.

At the very end, Sir John Chilcott says to Blair, is there anything else you'd like to say?

Blair said no, because he basically had got all of his arguments out, none of which was renew.

There was some phraseology This was the other thing listening to it, what did we really expect?

He genuinely seems to believe his position.

He may have made mistakes, which he was not prepared to countenance much of, but what have we learnt?

The it would have been naive to think he would have said anything different.

It was a stellar performance, the kind of performance we were accustomed to in the past.

He was nervous to start with, but then he warmed up and he was in complete control.

Does it get us anywhere?

What you might call the Blair beating a mass of our profession, a significant number of people out there have supped this up as, how many papers had this as judgement day for Tony Blair?

Everybody seems to be forgetting that there were some actually very pointed questions and the were also very cold towards and in marked contrast to the way the where with some other people.

They knew what role they have to play in the public mind, they were not to be friendly towards them.

But there is not anything else he will tell you that he has not said already.

Every time we declassified document, far from discovering an element of conspiracy, it tends to back up the right when he made in the first place about his version of events.

Why not release more of the documents?

Absolutely.

The inquiry is hamstrung by this.

I do not think it is very Armstrong.

The frustration is the documents are declassified on the day.

The classic one, the letter from Jack Straw to the Attorney-General.

He discovered Jack Straw makes a better argument on paper than he usually manages to do in public.

There are all kinds of problems.

One is that people who watch there's an already Keet Tony Blair, be just what to see he has fangs, horns and a tail.

All he said was, this was a decision.

It was not a conspiracy.

I said pretty much probably what I said privately.

When you say that, there is no way to criticise it, but that does not mean the inquiry does not have a responsibility to the bottom of several issues, including the legal We understand it if you set fire to something it is against the law, but what is the law that the Americans did not break, and the British apparently did break?

What are we suppose to believe?

Was the war for regime change?

Because that is not legal in this country.

It is not British policy to go for regime change in this country.

Was the UN given explicit permission, did they give permission to the UK to enter into this war?

Why did they spend so much time on this and get legal opinions and this from their own lawyers, who said very clearly this week, that this was an illegal war.

When you listen to the lawyer's, when you listen to Peter Goldsmith, it is a finely balanced argument, but on balance I think this.

Tony Blair said had the Attorney-General told me that this was illegal, it would not have gone ahead.

The illegality is of importance.

Sorry to interrupt, but it is not an exact science.

You are absolutely right.

There is no legal -- greater legal basis to the cost of intervention by NATO than that to the Iraqi function.

The anti Kosovo war people when silent when Milosevic was thrown out.

If, in five years' time, Iraq is a functioning democracy, and if, in 10 years' time, Afghanistan is stable, people will turn round and say, those guys did something good.

To pick upon that, because the situation has unravelled, and his criticism is taking place, had this been a short, sharp situation and a decisive victory and Peace restored, democracy brought into Iraq, we would not be talking into this today.

But it did not happen.

It was not expected to happen because one should have realised that they were going into a minefield.

To go back a little bit, without going into legalities, I do not whether it was legal or not, but I do know that as specific United Nations Security Council resolution was desirable, if not needed, to go and invade another country.

That said, one can also argue that the British parliament voted in favour of it.

In 2005, the British people ratified it in effect by bringing them back to office, the Labour Party.

Those arguments that one can go through one way or another, but the important thing is this, it is a mess.

Amiss was created.

As he said, if, tomorrow, the situation improves, people will say it was justified.

But you cannot just look at Iraq in five or 10 years, you have to look at the region and the effects that this had on the region, on Islamist, fundamentalists,…

You said we avoided a catastrophe, and I have e-mails in the region who say it did not.

There was a humanitarian catastrophe.

I think we know what he meant, I think it could have been a lot worse if Saddam Hussein had stayed.

And they were planning for possibility of famine.

Is your sense that we are not getting anywhere in this because the inquiry simply lacks detail?

I watched it a good deal, and my senses the constant nibbling around the edges -- my sense is the constant nibbling around the edges.

But this is about learning lessons, the first lesson is not to conduct an inquiry in this fashion.

As we ranged over the issues, I thought, any of those could be sorted in one day's discussion, but the need to do it within one day is absurd.

It made me feel that when we do get the report, it looks likely to be unsatisfactory.

It may not be unsatisfactory in Blair's favour.

Did they not leave the door open to calling him back?

Yes.

They were not friendly to him yesterday.

There was an element of correctness, they could have been more probing.

But the -- they let him go one but his answers, there was no keeping him on track.

The questions on Iran going to focus all the time.

If you have that short amount of time, you have to keep to the topic.

He did admit, had he known then what he knows now, he would have done things differently.

They're still would have been an invasion.

We're coming to something really important now.

The British supermarket chain Tesco has asked customers not to go shopping in their pyjamas.

What does this tell us about Britain, supermarkets, class and shopping?

You see it in America all the time, no Show tour no shoes.

But I have never seen pyjamas.

-- no shoes, no shirt.

used to wear a tie.

But look at what David is doing to her standards!

Am glad we talked about of wearing the pyjamas with bunny rabbits.

Who wears pyjamas to the supermarket?

I think it is women.

So I am told.

I have not tried it out myself, but apparently these are mainly women, and some people say there is a class matter.

Is it an attack on class?

It probably partly as.

Alan Corrin said that Tesco's only exist to get the riff- raff -- to keep the riff-raff and wafers.

Someone probably kit that in mind when they…

The idea, if we have lots of people coming in pyjamas, it is a short jump from that to them coming in their underwear.

Some people call at a fashion statement!

We do not want to be associated with people who are like that, who look like this and what it may become.

You have a coffee-making facilities back there, and you have a list of rules that has come to about 14 points.

This is about what you can and cannot do.

The way you have to pick things, and where things have to go.

Bennett says at the bottom, the admin team will monitor this area are very closely.

Of course they will not!

They have plenty to do.

I am also reminded of the Italian mayor of a seaside town he said women could not go topless on the beach.

And he was going to check!

I tried to do an interview with him, and he declined to justify it.

I was too scruffy.

Britain has been endeavouring to be multicultural for decades now.

There are certain cultures which has pyjamas which may be -- which may have a different name, as part of their national dress.

But I do not know if they have bunny rabbits on then!

There is also something else.

There is a Cool Britannia thing, but is Britain ruling the country.

In the summer months, people wear sandals, and pyjamas and slippers is not true the out of fashion these days, particularly when it comes to women.

-- is not really out of fashion.

Some schools have also asked if those dropping of children could not wear pyjamas.

Is that true?

In that case, you attend to get into the psychology of the person, what causes so much discomfort?

It was the idea of the Association with this type of behaviour.

It is a sign of sloppiness, that you do not care, and you do not want to be associated with it.

We do not have to be associated with its partners, -- with smartness, but we wish to not be sloppy.

Then there was the outfits, which were like cricket and pyjamas.

Yes so, pyjamas are obviously at the root of this.