HANABETH Luke has confronted horror few could imagine. And the young Australian student, who not only survived the Bali bombings but was heroic in rescuing others, confronted Tony Blair yesterday in a bid to persuade the British Prime Minister that war against Iraq was not an option.

After facing a large national television audience in Britain, Ms Luke told Mr Blair: “If you had experienced the horrors I have seen, known the grief I have known, you would be doing everything in your power to ensure that no other individual would ever have to go through this terrible experience.

” Ms Luke, who lost her boyfriend in the Bali attacks and became an inspiration after she was captured in a photograph dragging a stranger from the fiery remains of the Sari Club, was among 18 women, including mothers of September 11 victims, chosen to front Mr Blair on the high-profile British news program Tonight With Trevor McDonald.

“Like the women here,” the 22-year-old told Mr Blair,”if you knew that your son was not coming home, or there was a good chance he was not coming home, you would be thinking differently.”

Ms Luke told The Australian that Mr Blair began the program looking composed, but by the end was “in quite a sweat”.

“I tried to say: will your conscience allow you to bring death to thousands of innocent Iraqis? Will your conscience allow you to bring more death and destruction on innocent people?” she said “The women, one of whom for example had lost her only son on September 11, were very articulate and very passionate and Tony Blair didn’t have a chance. There was nothing he could say.”

After appearing on the program, Ms Luke presented Mr Blair with a photograph of herself and her boyfriend, Marc Gojard, taken the day before the Bali bombing.

She said one of the only compensations for the whole tragedy was the near-perfect days they had together leading up to the blasts.

“We were looking extraordinarily happy,” Ms Luke said.

“On the back was just the words ’11 October 2002′, which I think speaks volumes.”

Her horrific experience in Bali last October was compounded when the 17-year-old boy she rescued, Tom Singer, the photograph of which became one of the first and most searing images of the event, died a month later.

She said last night of the TV confrontation with the British leader, who has been the US’s strongest ally in backing military conflict against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein: “I just tried to appeal to Tony Blair on a personal level.”

Ms Luke, who is vehemently opposed to war, said she took issue with John Howard’s attempts to link Bali with Iraq, saying that the impending war “is not in the name of the Bali bombing”.

“There is no link,” she said.

“The Government is not realising that as long as they treat the symptoms and not the causes, terrorism will increase.”