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Tony Blair meets his namesakes in Kosovo

Tony Blair has met nine children named after him during a two-day visit to Kosovo. The boys were all born after Nato's 1999 military campaign, which the then UK Prime Minister advocated and which removed Serbian forces from the region.

He is credited by local people with playing a decisive role in ending former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic regime's ethnic cleansing Albanians.

"As you can see your name is quite common in our country," a teenage presenter told Tony Blair on a stage in Pristina, where several thousand people gathered, many carrying posters describing him as a “leader, friend and hero”.

Parents named their newborns after Blair to thank him for his role in leading the international community to intervene to stop the lethal crackdown on the ethnic-Albanian majority in Kosovo by Milosevic.

Speaking to Kosovo TV, the father of one of the children named after him remembered when Mr Blair visited a camp in neighbouring Albania where refugees had fled from the violence in their homeland.

"They ask me what the name is," Jahir Sahiti said on his son Tonibler. "I tell them that the name is Tonibler and I hope that he carries it in good health."

His mother Shukrija said she was very "proud" he was named after Mr Blair, adding: "I hope to God that he grows up to be like Tony Blair or just a fraction like him."

Tony Blair told the ecstatic crowd: "I did what was right. I did what was just. I did not regret it then. I do not regret it now.”

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 and the UK was among the first to recognise it.

Earlier in the day, Tony Blair addressed the National Assembly of Kosovo. You can read the full text of his speech here