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Blair urged: Stand up to Bush and call for ceasefire
Tony Blair will face fresh pressure over the Middle East crisis today when he arrives in Washington to meet President George Bush. Senior Downing Street aides said the two leaders intended to show the world they were seeking an urgent end to the hostilities in Lebanon, despite the failure of the much vaunted Rome summit on Wednesday to deliver a unified call for a truce.
Israel's Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, added to the pressure yesterday, when he interpreted that indecision as a green light to continue the bloody assault on Lebanon.
"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," he told reporters.
The Prime Minister's visit takes place as 42 leading figures in politics, diplomacy, academia and the media put their names to a declaration urging Mr Blair to tell the President that Britain "can no longer support the American position on the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle-East". Their declaration, printed on the front page of today's Independent, calls on the Prime Minister to "make urgent representations to Israel to end its disproportionate and counter-productive response to Hizbollah's aggression".
After his stop-over in Washington, Mr Blair will fly on to California tonight to attend a conference with the media magnate Rupert Murdoch. An ally of Mr Murdoch, Irwin Stelzer, insisted Mr Blair was not Mr Bush's "poodle", but his "guide dog", particularly over the Middle East.
Downing Street officials said Mr Blair intended to respond to world criticism by showing urgency in seeking an end to the hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah. The Prime Minister and the President are planning to commit their governments to a lasting ceasefire by restoring the authority of the elected government against the unilateral action by Hizbollah.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1201307.ece
"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," he told reporters.
The Prime Minister's visit takes place as 42 leading figures in politics, diplomacy, academia and the media put their names to a declaration urging Mr Blair to tell the President that Britain "can no longer support the American position on the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle-East". Their declaration, printed on the front page of today's Independent, calls on the Prime Minister to "make urgent representations to Israel to end its disproportionate and counter-productive response to Hizbollah's aggression".
After his stop-over in Washington, Mr Blair will fly on to California tonight to attend a conference with the media magnate Rupert Murdoch. An ally of Mr Murdoch, Irwin Stelzer, insisted Mr Blair was not Mr Bush's "poodle", but his "guide dog", particularly over the Middle East.
Downing Street officials said Mr Blair intended to respond to world criticism by showing urgency in seeking an end to the hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah. The Prime Minister and the President are planning to commit their governments to a lasting ceasefire by restoring the authority of the elected government against the unilateral action by Hizbollah.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1201307.ece
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Stephen Wall
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
No 10, which is both hothouse and bunker, is well stocked with TV sets. Prime ministers do not find much time to watch. They should. John Major led the rescue of the Iraqi Kurds in 1991 because, sitting at home over Easter, he had time to look at the news. What he saw shocked him into action. He mobilised the EU and then challenged George Bush Sr to back his plan for safe havens for the Kurds. A reluctant Bush was, in the end, also moved by what he saw on his screen.
I defy any person watching TV not to cry out loud for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. Yet our government and that of the US have weasel-worded their way through this tragedy. Why?
Tony Blair would argue that words of condemnation come cheap and that the job of a leader is to forgo the glib soundbite if, by grabbing a headline at home, you write yourself out of the script where it matters most - in this case, in Israel and the US. I have no doubt he has been urging President Bush to action, as well as working for a solution himself. He is right to sympathise with Israel's plight. And he will know the role that Iran and Syria are playing behind the scenes.
Yet sympathy for Israel and its suffering, the detestation of terrorist organisations such as Hizbullah, and the desire to see a durable cessation of hostilities, do not justify silence - or adequately explain the reasons for it.
In their bunker, leaders become isolated from the world. Pressure, isolation and fatigue undermine good judgment. But the overriding reason for Britain's loss of moral authority is Blair's conviction that he has to hitch the UK to the chariot of the US president. Realism about an independent foreign policy is sensible, not least on the 50th anniversary of Suez. This government has taken to unprecedented lengths the view that Britain's influence on the US can be exercised only in private. It has too readily lost sight of the fact that Britain's interests and those of the US are not identical.
There have been times on trade issues when Blair should have told Bush to get his tanks off our lawn. There are still times when, as well as working quietly with Congress on climate change, we should speak up about the irresponsibility of the White House.
There are times when a British prime minister should have been thinking less about private influence and more about public advocacy. Could Blair really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives were wrong and should stop immediately? "What kind of ceasefire?" Blair asks. One that stopped the horror, even for 24 hours, would be a start.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1832058,00.html