Blair Heads For US To Press For Peace In The Middle East

The Prime Minister, who is said to be “deeply frustrated” that Mr Bush has failed to fulfil his promise of spending “political capital” on brokering a settlement between the Arabs and Israelis, will arrive on Wednesday evening.

The timing of his visit, just hours after the eagerly awaited report of the Iraq Study Group is published, was described by a senior British Government source yesterday as “a coincidence, but a happy one”.

Mr Blair will hold meetings on Thursday with Mr Bush and Congressional leaders — including Democrats who are about to take control of Capitol Hill — at a time when Washington will be buzzing with talk of a new direction for Iraq and the Middle East.

Democratic leaders are strongly supportive of Israel, with senate aides telling Mr Blair yesterday not to “bet his mortgage” on securing a breakthrough. But they are critical of Mr Bush for having engaged “spasmodically” on the Palestinian question and believe that the US needs to show greater leadership.

Mr Blair’s visit follows controversial remarks made by Kendall Myers, a State Department official, who claimed last week that the relationship between Britain and the US was “totally one-sided” and that the Prime Minister’s advice was routinely ignored by the President. But the Prime Minister has never given up on trying to secure US backing for a broader Middle East settlement. He still hopes that such a settlement could put a positive gloss on his personal legacy, as well as help to end the war, which has tarnished it more than anything, by eliminating a source of resentment across the Muslim world in Iraq and elsewhere.

Mr Blair is expected to emphasise the role the European Union can play in bolstering the Palestinian Authority’s political and economic infrastructure — badly damaged by sanctions imposed by the US this year — which is still vital for building confidence on both sides.

Mr Blair recently sent Sir Nigel Sheinwald, his foreign policy adviser, to Syria to explore the possibility of greater engagement, and is expected to visit the Middle East himself before the end of the year.

British officials remain reluctant to criticise Mr Bush publicly, but the Government source spoke yesterday of the need for a “sustained effort” and a “consistent view” from the White House. He contrasted the dormant negotiations in the Middle East with “the way we have tried to maintain the peace process in Northern Ireland through day in, day out engagement”.

The Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by the former Secretary of State James Baker, is widely expected to recommend a gradual withdrawal of US combat troops as well as direct engagement with pariah states such as Iran and Syria — possibly through a wider Middle East peace conference.

President Bush has emphasised in recent days that he has no intention of taking US troops off the battlefield until their mission is completed. He has also stated that the Baker report is just one of many opinions that he will consider.

Yesterday it emerged that Donald Rumsfeld had set out a long list of such options, including troop withdrawals, in a memo that he sent two days before his resignation as Defence Secretary.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, said yesterday that Iraq was now in a civil war and its people were worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein.

But senior National Security Agency and Pentagon officials, who are conducting their own reviews of policy in Iraq, have said that they expect only a minor recalibration in overall policy in the coming months. Instead, they have been told by the President that they should start from the goal of where they want to be in 2008 — handing more control to a stable Iraqi government — and “work backwards from there”.

The US officials also appeared sceptical about the likely Baker-Hamilton recommendation for engaging with Iran and Syria. They said that Iran in particular was playing a progressively bolder hand in fomenting violence within Iraq.

However, they suggested that Mr Bush was more sympathetic towards a regional peace conference. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, spent six hours discussing the Middle East peace process with Arab leaders during the President’s visit to Jordan last week.

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