British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he would not change course over Iraq and rejected the growing demands by Labor lawmakers for him to distance himself with US President George W. Bush, the British Independent newspaper reported on Friday.

"The most important thing is that we work with our coalition partners and sort it out, get the security situation right, so theIraqis themselves are capable of doing the security, which is whatthey want to do," Blair told the paper in an interview, the firstsince the crisis over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US and British troops caused speculation that he might stand down.

Rejecting calls for him to "put some light" between Britain andthe United States, Blair insisted that it would be exactly the wrong time to do so.

In the interview, he also said he was "frustrated" that Iraq was overshadowing what he called the government's significant achievements on the economy, jobs and public services.

The furor over the Iraqi prisoners abuse does not seem to go away in Britain as the British Guardian newspaper reported on Friday that senior figures across the British ruling Labor Party were intensifying pressure on Blair to publicly detach himself from the Bush administration, calling him to spell out an independent British position on the Middle East, peacekeeping in Iraq and the US presidential election.