From No 10 to the Middle East: Blair gets a new job*

Support from Bush leads to role as international envoy helping Palestinians

Patrick Wintour and Ian Black
Tuesday June 26, 2007
The Guardian

Tony Blair has landed a major diplomatic job as the international Middle
East peace envoy, responsible for preparing the Palestinians for
negotiations with Israel. His role, to be announced today, will be
largely to work with the Palestinians over security, economy and governance.

Working from an office in Jerusalem, and possibly another in the West
Bank, Mr Blair will become the special representative for the Middle
East quartet of UN, EU, US and Russia. The announcement comes on the eve
of his departure from Downing Street tomorrow and is privately welcomed
by Gordon Brown.

The arrangement, which has been under preparation for weeks, is due to
be agreed at a meeting of the quartet today.

Friends of Mr Blair suggest he would make it a central purpose of his
mission to work to restore Palestinian unity after the armed takeover of
the Gaza Strip by the Islamist movement Hamas.

At times he has had to bend with an American willingness to bolster
Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader, while ignoring the plight of 1.4m
Palestinians in Gaza.

The idea of Mr Blair doing this job is understood to have originated
with the prime minister himself in conversation with George Bush, who
then suggested it to the UN. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is
said to be a keen supporter and Washington was reported last night to
have mounted "an enormous push" to ensure Mr Blair got the post.

Diplomats said there was some disquiet over the way US talks with Mr
Blair were well advanced before any details were shared with the other
quartet partners.

Mr Blair has contantly pressed Mr Bush to take a more active role in
securing a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Though his
standing in the so-called Arab street may be low because of his role in
the invasion of Iraq, he is held in high standing among Arab political
elites, and he has frequently spoken of his passion to play a part in
helping to secure peace in the Middle East.

It was being stressed last night that Mr Blair's role - in the short
term at least - would not be to act as a mediator between the
Palestinians and the Israelis, or to become a negotiator for the road
map to peace. He might, however, be responsible for trying to persuade
the Palestinians to accept the conditions for ending the international
boycott of Hamas. The now defunct Hamas government has not received any
international aid since its election in March 2006, although aid has
been sent directly to the poorest Palestinians through a temporary
international mechanism.

The quartet says aid can only be conditional on the Palestinians
accepting the right of Israel to exist and giving a commitment to
exclusively peaceful means and to abide by all previous agreements.

Critics have claimed the preconditions have impoverished the
Palestinians, boosted unemployment and led to the radicalisation of
Hamas, culminating in Hamas controlling Gaza, and Fatah the West Bank.

Diplomats familiar with the proposed mandate for Mr Blair said it did
not differ in substance from that of his predecessor, Jim Wolfensohn,
who left the job in April 2006. Mr Wolfensohn worked on issues such as
galvanising international economic assistance to the Palestinians,
economic development, governance, justice and human rights. Mr Blair's
appointment was discussed by Mr Ban and Condoleezza Rice, the US
secretary of state, at a conference in Paris yesterday before the
quartet envoys met to conclude the deal in Jerusalem this morning.

The four envoys are David Welch for the US, Michael Williams for the UN,
Marc Otte for the EU and Sergei Yakovlev for Russia. It was Mr Welch,
assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, who discussed the idea
with the prime minister in London last week.

Russia had initially been opposed to the plan but Sergei Lavrov, the
country's foreign minister, referred the proposal back to Vladimir
Putin, the president, diplomats said. Although Mr Putin and Mr Blair
held a relatively heated bilateral meeting at the G8 last month, Mr
Putin is not going to deploy his veto.

Mr Blair's reputation as a negotiator in Northern Ireland suggests that
he has the patience and determination to bring differing sides together.
He has repeatedly said the Middle East peace talks need to be
micro-managed in the way that he handled the Northern Ireland peace process.

Diplomats say the prime minister is in a better position than Mr
Wolfensohn, a former World Bank president who was backed by Kofi Annan
at the UN but eventually opposed by the US. "That may not be the case
with Blair because he has such a hold in Washington," said one.

An Arab official was more sceptical. "I don't know what Blair is going
to be able to achieve," he said. "And anyway, what does Palestinian
governance mean at this point in time when there is a geographical and
political separation between the West Bank and Gaza?"

Mr Blair's talks in Rome with the Pope were largely centred on his
strategy to build a bridge between faiths. One of his great aims is to
secure a reconciliation between Islam and Christianity.

His appointment would come at a low ebb for the peace process, although
there were slightly more optimistic noises from a summit in Egypt
yesterday. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said last night that
he would release 250 Palestinian prisoners in an effort to restart the
long-stalled peace process, after meeting Mr Abbas, King Abdullah of
Jordan and the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.