The Hindu : International : Labour leaders ask Blair to loosen ties with U.S.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 16, 2004

International

International

Labour leaders ask Blair to loosen ties with U.S.

By Nicholas Watt and
Michael White

LONDON, MAY 15. Senior figures across Britain's ruling Labour party are intensifying pressure on the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to publicly detach himself from the Bush administration, calling on him to spell out an independent British position on West Asia, peacekeeping in Iraq and the U.S. presidential election.

Normally loyal Ministers have joined backbench colleagues to urge the Prime Minister to demonstrate his political detachment from Washington amid fears that the spiralling crisis in Iraq is undermining his domestic standing.

According to Ministers and Labour backbenchers from all wings of the party interviewed by the London-based Guardian newspaper, Mr Blair should seize the earliest opportunity to recalibrate his approach to foreign affairs.

Key party members are advising Mr Blair's officials in Downing Street, London, to change tack in three key areas: Drawing a line between Britain's widely acclaimed peacekeeping record and the heavy-handed military tactics of US forces in Iraq; Advocating a more emollient approach to the West Asia peace process, undoing the damage of Mr Blair's Rose Garden endorsement of the Sharon plan. In particular, they want London to highlight the E.U.'s refusal to follow Washington's imposition of sanctions on Syria; And courting U.S. Democrats more actively in the election year without breaking traditional conventions of Government-to-Government neutrality.

Mr Blair has made clear to his supporters that he will not criticise the U.S. President, George Bush, in public.

But he is said to have conceded that he will have to soften his stance on Iraq in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal.

``Tony can seem a bit one-dimensional on Iraq because he is so sure that what he did was right. That has changed with the pictures from Abu Ghraib: he now realises that people who supported the war are very worried and have the right to ask: How did it end up like this?'' one former minister said.

Mr Blair has also indicated that he will do more to court the Democrats, Labour's historic U.S. allies, who are seeking to put Senator John Kerry in the White House.

Mr Blair is understood to have heeded the advice of Ministers who say that, unless his party can improve ties with the Democrats, the Government will be badly exposed if Mr Kerry wins on November 2.

Ministers are expected to try to shape their U.S. trips around Democrat-controlled States, where they will take the opportunity to hob-nob with like-minded opposite numbers.

Downing Street's priority is to refocus political debate on the domestic agenda.

The extent to which the Iraq crisis is spreading political unease across Europe was underlined yesterday when the French Government said the region was spinning out of control.

Speaking to Le Monde about the U.S.-led occupation, the Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, likened Iraq to a black hole.

He said: ``It all gives the impression of a total lack of direction. What strikes me is the spiral of horror, of blood, of inhumanity that one sees on all fronts, from Fallujah to Gaza and in the terrible pictures of the assassination of the unfortunate American hostage.''

Earlier this week, Jack Straw, the U.K. Foreign Secretary, made unusually forthright criticisms of the Bush administration. —

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