Comment at end
28th January, 2009
BLAIR SAYS INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY ON GAZA HAS FAILED
From Haaretz, today, just as George Mitchell lands in the THICK OF IT. (Apologies for the oblique-ish references to Blair here and here. An irritating habit of mine, I know. It even irritates me too, at times.)
Perhaps it’s not quite a new dawn in the Middle East. Not yet anyway. But if not yet, under the combined efforts of Messrs Mitchell & Blair, given a fair new wind in their sails from the American presidency, perhaps there is now some small chink of hope or even light. If nothing else Mr Obama will have noticed the colour of Ahmadinejad’s intentions following the “unclenched fist” interchange.
Excerpt from Haaretz:
International Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair has called for “a new strategy in Gaza,” in remarks made in Cairo on Wednesday, and admitted that the international community’s approach to the Palestinian territory had not worked.
“We need a new strategy for Gaza,” Blair told reporters after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “We should learn from what happened in the past few weeks and make sure that in the future our strategy toward Gaza is different from the one we have pursued until now, because it hasn’t worked, and we need to change it.”
Former British prime minister Blair, who represents the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators – including the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – also met with U.S. President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.
Mitchell was in Cairo for meetings with President Mubarak and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
Blair and Mitchell, who worked together to help produce the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, are now touring the Middle East separately trying to establish a lasting cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
“O GOES UNILATERAL”
IS HE REALLY ABOUT TO TRY TO DUMP BLAIR?
I don’t think so. But Amir Taheri at the New York Post does. In an article titled “O Goes Unilateral” he takes a swipe at Obama’s sunburst of policies. He believes that Obama has “dissed” US allies on the Middle East, and even aims to be rid of Tony Blair while he’s at it.
Only time will tell. But if Mitchell and many Arab leaders are consulted by the American President over Blair’s usefulness, I believe there will be a large thumbs-up. And we should retain in mind that were Obama about to opt out of The Quartet itself, which in effect he would be doing were he to unilaterally ask Mr Blair to go home, he would be lining himself up in opposition to the EU, the UN and Russia. Ambitious he might be. Presently popular, he is. Daft he isn’t.
One way to lose friends and fail to influence people, even people in the USA itself, would be to instigate the removal of Tony Blair and his political nous.
It didn’t do much for Gordon Brown’s popularity or success as Prime Minister.
Dr Sanity refers in “From ‘Multilateral Diplomacy’ to Unilateral Appeasement” to the Amir Taheri article, as well as many sources in his (perhaps harsh) diagnosis of the ‘psychological’ conditions affecting the Arab world. He clearly feels that Obama is practising appeasement.
Excerpt from Dr Dr Sanity article:
“Now, under normal circumstances, I might cheer that the US is going rogue and finally ignoring the useless UN and following its own national interests instead of admiring the European’s often suicidal appeasement toward the Middle East and Islam. But this is exactly what Obama is NOT doing. In fact, its beginning to look like he intends to ‘out-UN’ the UN and ‘out-Europe’ the Europeans in taking his appeasement to new and greater heights of appeasementdom.”
Tags: a new dawn in the middle east, George Mitchell, Obama, the Quartet, Tony Blair Middle East envoy
