Blair attempts to restart Middle East talks
The prime minister hopes to get people talking about the Middle East peace process once again when he visits the region in the near future, Downing Street has said.
Tony Blair was keen to get people looking beyond the immediate problem of enforcing the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, to the deeper issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations, his official spokesman told reporters this morning.
He refused to confirm when the prime minister would visit the region, and did not comment on reports in the Israeli press that Mr Blair would be meeting with Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, this weekend.
However, he said that following the war between Israel and Hizbullah this summer, there was “anger and distrust on all sides” and as a consequence, it would be difficult to get people discussing the road map for the Middle East.
Mr Blair has previously insisted that resolving the Israel-Palestine issue is the key to resolving much of the tension in the Middle East. Last month, he said he would regard it a personal failure if he failed to restart talks on the issue.
“The events in the summer reaffirmed the view of the need to address this underlying and fundamental issue. This means Palestine,” his spokesman said today.
“This is why the prime minister believes that a visit is not an end in itself, but it would be a method of trying to get a restart to re-engagement. The ambition is no higher than that.”
At the G8 meeting in St Petersburg earlier this year, Mr Blair was caught on microphone offering to go to the Middle East and help negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah. However, US president George Bush rejected his suggestion.
Mr Blair met with Labour MPs last week to discuss their concerns about his Middle East policy, where he reportedly accepted that his failure to call for an immediate ceasefire had been damaging.
His attempt to restart the road map, which would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, will be seen as an attempt to mollify his critics on this issue.
This morning, the Downing Street spokesman defended Mr Blair’s stance, saying that throughout the summer he had been calling for a ceasefire, but on both sides – Israel stopping its attacks on southern Lebanon would be no good unless Hizbullah stopped too.
“The prime minister has been saying for many years that you need to address the underlying fundamental issue, which was why you needed to have proper engagement on all sides,” he said.
“The key is how, in the midst of a difficult phase, you begin to get people to start that process of reengagement.”
