LONDON (IRNA) - Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush are "co-defendants" in war crimes committed by the Zionist regime in Lebanon, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said.

Mottaki, the Guardian reported on Monday, also said British and U.S. leaders had foreknowledge of Israeli plans to launch "campaign of aggression" in Lebanon which he said was part of a "war on the whole Middle East".

Iran's foreign minister criticized Blair's refusal to back earlier calls for an immediate ceasefire and the Security Council's failure to condemn Israeli carnage, including the Qana bombing last week in which dozens of women and children were killed.

"Some Lebanese officials have said that Israel, because of the many atrocities it has committed and because of the devastation it has brought on Lebanon, has to be prosecuted," he was quoted saying.

"They say it has to be put on trial and it has to pay reparations," Mottaki said.

Saying "the aggression unleashed by the Zionist regime was premediated", he added, "One month prior to the aggression, there were military manoeuvres carried out by Zionist troops and this tells us that this incident was in the works for some time".

"There were preparing for this... The British and American policies tell me that they did know beforehand the intentions of the Zionist regime."

"This something that I talked about in my telephone conversation with the British foreign secretary a week ago."

Mottaki said, "With this in mind, we believe the British and Americans have a share in the atrocities in Lebanon and they are the reason why all international efforts to date (to end the fighting) have not been successful."

Bush's "greater Middle East initiative" was nothing more than a plan for further "aggression and occupation and the killing of innocents, Guardian quoted him.

"This is a war against the whole of the Middle East," Iran's foreign minister stated.