Bill Clinton has mounted a passionate defence of the Third Way.

In a wide-ranging speech on the need to promote a "global community", the former US president addressed issues ranging from Aids in Africa to the re-branding of Iain Duncan Smith's "compassionate Conservatives".

Since leaving office at the end of 2000, Clinton has seen Tony Blair as one of the last remaining advocates of Third Way politics.He told Britain and the Labour Party to stick with "what works".

After listing the major challenges facing the world today, Clinton told Blackpool delegates that "we cannot do good abroad unless we are good at home".

"The ultimate case for the Third Way is that it works: good values, good vision, good policies," he said.

"We had eight years of evidence in the United States and now five years of evidence here that it works."

He said it was about people "growing together not growing apart" and moving "beyond entitlement to empowerment".

Clinton said false choices "dominate politics" all over the world - but not in Britain.

"You should be proud that you have stayed with what works," he told delegates.

After admitting to setbacks for the centre-left in European elections, he pointed to the German election as proof that the right would not win everywhere.

His message to delegates was to stick with the policies of New Labour.

"Keep telling people that strength and compassion are two sides of the same coin," he said.

In a crowd-pleasing passage he mocked Iain Duncan Smith's rebranding of the Tories as "compassionate conservatives".

Clinton said a "good turn of phrase" was a mixture of reality and rhetoric.

"The rhetoric is compassionate. The reality is conservative," he told delegates.

He spoke warmly about his time in Britain as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford university.

The former president said that during a recent visit to Africa he had been reminded "time and again" of the importance of politics.

He said New Partnership for African Development was a "third way document" because it envisages responsibilities for both Africa and the developed world.

Taking the theme of increasing global interdependence, Clinton said it had only really begun developing with the creation of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And he said it was only since the collapse of the Berlin Wall that the possibility of tackling global problems had really emerged.

"The world has a whole lot of problems. We haven't had a chance to bring it together for very long. You should be grateful that your party is in power and has a chance to make a difference," added Clinton.

But he said that an interdependent world still excluded billions of people living in poverty.

September 11 provided proof that we live in a world that is not yet an "integrated community".

The number one task facing the world, Clinton argued, was moving from interdependence to a global community that celebrates differences but acknowledges that "our common humanity matters more".

Turning to Iraq, he won applause for stressing the role of the United Nations.

"We have to stand against weapons of mass destruction but in the end we have to do it in the context of international institutions," he said.

He observed that all of the international institutions were continuing to develop in the decade since the end of the Cold War.

And he said the US sometimes failed "to contribute as much as we should" to the international community.

To the evident satisfaction of delegates, he added: "You can't have an integrated world and have your say all the time.

"America can lead the world in that direction but not dominate the world."

Clinton concluded by telling delegates it was important to get the world to embrace a "simple set of ideas".

"We must move from interdependence to integration because our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences, and makes the expression of those differences possible.

"Because every child deserves a chance, every adult has a role to play, and we all do better when we work together. That is why we must build the institutions that will help us integrate.

"That is why we must stand against the threats - whether they are from weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, tyrants, Aids, climate change, poverty, ignorance and disease - which would tatter this world and prevent us ever from coming together as one.

"And that is why we must never forget people at home even as we work for those around the world.

"Why we must want the same thing for the children of Britain and America, the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus, the children of the Hutus and Tutsies in Rwanda, the Colombian children so beleaguered by the narco-traffickers and the terrorists there, the children of the East Timorese and the Indonesians in the Pacific, the children of the Muslims and the Hindus and the Sikhs in Kashmir and Gujarat, and maybe someday even for the children of the Palestinians and the Israelis in the Middle East.

"I ask you to think of this work as the true and ultimate Third Way - going beyond the exclusive claims of old opponents to a future we can all share.

"Going beyond the fears and the grudges, the fights and the failures of yesterday's demons to a truth we can all embrace.

"The Third Way in the end must lift our adversaries as well as our friends. The children we must remember to see because they are too far away as well as those just under our feet.

"If we do it the 21st century will be the brightest time the world has ever known.

"And if we do it, it will be in no small measure because when you were called to meet the great challenge of the new millennium, you responded."