BRIGHTON, England – Prime Minister Blair launched his campaign for a record third term by pledging to put an enhanced basic state pension at the heart of a domestic program to win back the trust of voters after dividing the nation over Iraq.

He unveiled a 10-point manifesto offering greater choice in health and education, help for first-time home buyers, the introduction of identity cards, and a commitment to tackle the looming pensions crisis.

Mr. Blair apologized to his party and the country for using “wrong” information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction but stopped short of saying sorry for the war.

Addressing his party’s conference in Brighton, the prime minister acknowledged that the government’s problem with trust was directly attributable to his decision to join the invasion of Iraq.

In a rare display of contrition, he accepted that he had divided the country. He portrayed himself as a fallible human being who could have been wrong but who had acted from the best of motives: to protect Britain after the September 11 attacks.

He urged his party to put aside its differences over Iraq and unite be hind the campaign to win a third successive term – an opportunity, he said, that was unique in Labour’s 100-year history.

With the shadow of Iraq hanging over the conference, including the hostage crisis and the death of two more British soldiers in Basra, Mr. Blair’s speech was more subdued than usual, shorn of triumphalist and confrontational rhetoric.

Protests over hunting and Iraq disrupted the speech despite one of the biggest security operations mounted at a party conference. Demonstrators harangued him from the audience before being removed.

Outside, Reginald Keys, the father of a 20-year-old soldier killed by a mob in Iraq last June, climbed the West Pier and threatened to hang himself. Before police coaxed him down, he demanded an apology from the prime minister.

Thousands of pro-foxhunting demonstrators protested noisily outside the conference. Some threw eggs and police intervened to separate the protesters from rival groups of hunt saboteurs.

As Mr. Blair began his address, he was interrupted by Hector Christie, shouting: “You have blood on your hands.” Mr. Blair was cheered when he told the heckler: “You can make your protest. Just thank goodness we live in a democracy and you can.”

After months of insisting that Saddam Hussein’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, which formed the basis of the government’s case for war, would be found, Mr. Blair finally admitted that the information “turned out to be wrong.”

He could apologize for that but “I can’t, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam.” The world was a better place without him.

Downing Street had said in advance that Mr. Blair would say he was “genuinely sorry” that Iraq had divided the country. But he dropped the phrase from his speech. He said his judgments had been influenced by his belief that September 11 had changed the world and that the new security threat was “world-wide global terrorism.”

“I never anticipated spending time on working out how terrorists trained in a remote part of the Hindu Kush could end up on British streets threatening our way of life.”

Appealing to his party to “stay the course” in Iraq, he promised to make the revival of the Middle East peace process “a personal priority.”