Tony, off to get his orders, also makes suggestions:
Tony Blair will press George Bush today to support "as a matter of urgency" a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a UN security council resolution next week, according to Downing Street sources.At a White House meeting, the prime minister will express his concern that pro-western Arab governments are "getting squeezed" by the crisis and the longer it continues, the more squeezed they will be, giving militants a boost. The private view from No 10 is that the US is "prevaricating" over the resolution and allowing the conflict to run on too long.
I believe plan A was for Israel to have smashed Hezbollah in time for Tony and George to get together and announce an international sweeping up operation. It was pretty obvious from early this week that that wasn’t about to happen, and the Arab states have been backing away from the original pro-Israeli coalition under pressure from their own people. Now Tony’s peeling away, specifically over the pressure friendly Arab governments are feeling. What’s interesting about this is that it’s a classic British diplomatic position in relation to the Middle East – as interlocutor between friendly Arab dictatorships and Washington, attempting to pull the US back from its reflective pro-Israel bias.
After all those years of flap and doodle about the Blair doctrines and Chicago speeches, it’s like having Douglas Hurd back.
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