"As Hillary Clinton was saying yesterday, the important thing is to engage in this process of modernisation, and improving systems of government, but do it in a way that keeps the order and stability of the country together."
Asked if Mubarak should stay in power, Blair said: "Well I think the decisions about how this is done is incredibly difficult. President Mubarak has been in power for 30 years. There's obviously in any event going to be an evolution and a change there. The question is how does that happen in the most stable way possible.
"All over that region there is essentially one issue, which is how do they evolve and modernise, both in terms of their economy, their society and their politics. All I'm saying is that in the case of Egypt and in the case in Yemen, because there are other factors in this, not least those who would use any vacuum in order to ferment extremism, that you do this in what I would call a stable and ordered way ....
"This is not limited to one country in the region. It's all over the region. You have got to take account of the fact that when you unleash this process of reform, unless you are going to be very, very careful about how it's done and how it's staged, then you run risks as well."
Blair said the West should engage with countries like Egypt in the process of change "so that you weren't left with what is actually the most dangerous problem in the Middle East, which is that an elite that has an open minded attitude but it's out of touch with popular opinion, and popular opinion that can often - because it has not been given popular expression in its politics - end up frankly with the wrong idea and a closed idea."
