IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 216
Friday, February 23, 2001
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The Monitor is published each weekday by the Mariam Appeal
www.mariamappeal.com
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FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST
CHECK www.orientmagazine.co.uk EACH DAY
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CALL FOR AN END TO SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ
To commemorate 10th anniversary of ending of the Gulf War
24-HOUR, WEEK-LONG PICKET OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS
Thursday 22nd to Wednesday 28th February 2001
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Foreign Ministry condemns latest bombing of Iraq.
Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1031 gmt 23 Feb 01
Excerpt report in English by Russian news agency Interfax
Moscow, 23 February: The Russian Foreign Ministry has again
criticized the use of force against Iraq by the United States.
The 22 February US air raid in Iraq "violates the UN Charter and
international standards", the ministry said in a statement that
reached Interfax on Friday [23 February]
Such activities that are carried out in contravention of the UN
security resolutions "only add to the complexity of the regional
situation and create obstacles to the settlement of the Iraqi issue,"
it says.
"A few days after an attack on targets outside Baghdad, the US Air
Force has staged a new strike," the statement says. This time US
warplanes based in Turkey targeted installations near Mosul in the so-
called northern no-fly zone, it says.
The use of force against Iraq continues despite rejection of these
actions by most members of the international community, the statement
says.
Russia "firmly advocates political and diplomatic methods of solving
the Iraqi problem", the statement says. "It is especially important
now to create a favourable atmosphere for launching a dialogue
between Iraq and the United Nations that is scheduled to start in New
York on 26 February," it says.
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US and Britain hit Iraq again.
WASHINGTON: US and British warplanes attacked targets in the
Iraqi "no fly" zone yesterday, following raids on radar and
communications sites near Baghdad last week.
The US European Command said the raids were in response to Iraqi anti-
aircraft fire and came as Washington and London weathered criticism
from the Arab world over policy towards Baghdad.
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French foreign minister says UN agrees sanctions on Iraq no
longer "appropriate" - Official holds "positive and constructive"
talks in Paris - Baghdad radio.
Source: Republic of Iraq Radio, Baghdad, in Arabic 1900 gmt 22 Feb 01
Text of report by Iraqi radio on 22 February
Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Nizar Hamdun held a series of talks
in Paris with Loic Hennekinne, French Foreign Ministry secretary
general; Yves Aubin de la Messuziere, chief of the North Africa and
Middle East Desk; Felix Paganon [name phonetic], the director of the
UN Department at the French Foreign Ministry. The talks dealt with
bilateral relations and ways to promote them in the political,
economic, cultural, and scientific fields, in addition to issues
related to the developments in the region. Hamdun discussed in detail
with the French officials the relationship between Iraq and the
United Nations and reviewed the various aspects of this relationship.
In a statement to the Iraqi News Agency, Nizar Hamdun said that the
talks with the French side were positive and constructive. He added
that these talks were held in a frank atmosphere with the aim of
developing bilateral relations.
_____________________________________________________
Colin Powell wants to shift the focus of America's Middle Eastern
policy from Israel to Iraq
GEORGE BUSH has enjoyed his honeymoon in Washington by following a
political version of Colin Powell's military doctrine: identify a few
clear targets; aim for victory; marshal overwhelming force; have an
exit strategy. Now Mr Powell is about to offend against all the
tenets of his own doctrine. This weekend he begins his first foreign
visit as Mr Bush's secretary of state by going to that graveyard of
expectations and destroyer of clarity, the Middle East. It is the
first real test of Mr Bush's intent to inject a new hard-headedness
into foreign policy.
The administration argues American authority and prestige have been
lost in the region, largely because of the failure of the Oslo peace
process in which (Mr Bush thinks) Bill Clinton invested too much. The
unstated aim of Mr Powell's visit is to begin rebuilding that
authority and the way he has chosen to do it would-assuming he can
carry it out-shift the primary focus of American policy away from the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process towards Iraq.
The idea is far from stupid: if America were able to neutralise or
even overthrow Saddam Hussein, its regional prestige would indeed
soar. But even leaving aside the tough question of what it can
actually do about Saddam, there are doubts about whether America can
even shift the focus in the way it wants. Mr Clinton, after all, came
into office promising to do much the same thing.
This time, the regional balance seems favourable to a policy shift.
The Oslo peace process is dead. Israel will soon get a new
government. The sanctions regime against Iraq is falling apart. In
the Arab world, sanctions fatigue is turning into sanctions outrage.
In America, fatigue is turning into sanctions defeatism. Every part
of America's Middle Eastern policy is now under review.
Before and after his election, Mr Bush argued that Mr Clinton was
embroiling himself too deeply in the minutiae of Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations. He claimed that America was wrongly seeking to impose
its own deadlines on the parties. And he concluded that if the two
sides were not ready for a settlement, then no amount of American
involvement could help them. Putting this in practice is the easy
part. America can easily distance itself from a peace process that
doesn't exist. However, the implications of Mr Bush's views go
further.
To begin with, it suggests Mr Bush may be willing to wait for several
years before engaging in the peace process again. The State
Department is sceptical of optimists' claims that Ariel Sharon,
Israel's tough new prime minister, might turn into an unlikely
peacemaker. In reality, America's Middle Eastern policymakers reckon
that Mr Sharon's record ("grab the hilltops"), his militant
supporters and his unwillingness even to talk about Jerusalem all
militate against peace.
By the same token, Arab hopes that America might put active pressure
on Israel also seem unlikely to be realised. The main reason for this
hope appears to be that in 1991 Mr Bush's father threatened to
suspend loan guarantees to Israel over the issue of illegal
settlements. But it is not clear that the younger Bush could make
that sort of threat even if he wanted to.
Over time, Republicans in Congress have become increasingly pro-
Israeli (especially with Jesse Helms as head of the Senate foreign
relations committee). There is even talk in Congress about putting
the Palestine Authority back on the list of state sponsors of
terrorism. The absence of a peace process also means the
administration can no longer head off actions by pro-Israeli
congressmen by arguing that they could upset the talks.
In practice, America's main policy aim in Israel will switch not from
engagement to disengagement, but from peace making to damage
limitation. This has implications beyond Israel. Mr Bush's advisers
argue that Mr Clinton's concentration on the peace process was not
merely unwarranted, but in some ways harmful. The charge is that the
former president saw the whole region through the prism of the peace
process. This led him to ignore the increasingly destabilising
influence of Iraq and to neglect bilateral relations with other
countries in the region.
The fraying of the Gulf war coalition-as the Bush administration sees
it-was the product of America's obsession with the peace process. The
Bush response is to start rebuilding those ties. This does not appear
to be the sort of abrupt American unilateralism that many people
fear. Rather, it makes more sense to see the new Bush administration
as trying to rebuild the Gulf war coalition of George Bush senior.
The main aim of the rebuilding is to tackle Saddam Hussein, which
means in the first instance changing the sanctions regime. The new
administration does not think sanctions have failed completely. But
they are a big obstacle to hopes of improving relations with Arab
allies. At his confirmation hearings, Mr Powell said that America
used sanctions too readily. Iraq will be the first test of whether he
can get the policy right.
The aim is to accept a less comprehensive embargo over civilian
exports in order to gain wider international support for a tougher
regime over military supplies. This would involve setting up
something that resembles the Cocom controls over high-tech exports to
the Soviet Union during the cold war. Purely civilian exports would
be unrestricted (most of them are anyway). So would "dual use" goods
that are largely civilian. But to police the ban on military
equipment, America wants more vigorous controls on smuggling and some
sort of inspection regime within Iraq to check on how "dual use"
goods are being used (to stop them being hijacked for military
purposes).
Leave aside for a moment the critical question of how much good this
would really do. Mr Powell is likely to get support for something
like this change. Most American allies believe it is possible both to
contain Mr Hussein and meet their humanitarian (and commercial) aims.
Despite the almost universal condemnation of last week's air attack
near Baghdad (see article), the State Department also reckons it can
get international agreement on how much military force to use to back
up any new sanctions regime-certainly to destroy weapons of mass
destruction; probably to defend American and British airplanes
patrolling the no-fly zone.
The real unresolved question is whether America goes further and
seeks to overthrow Saddam. There are two small signs that it might be
considering the idea. The first is the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz
as deputy secretary of defence: he is the foremost advocate of
supporting the Iraqi opposition to destabilise the regime. The other
is a change of policy towards the opposition itself. On the day of
the air strike, and without any fanfare, the head of the Iraqi
National Congress, one anti-Saddam group, visited the State
Department and came away with a promise that America would help the
INC run humanitarian operations and gather evidence of war crimes
within Iraq itself.
At the moment, the support is minor. But any increase in support
could destabilise American policy more than Saddam. Seeking to
overthrow the regime is anathema to most of America's allies. State-
Department officials have made it clear that, while everything else
can be discussed, support for the Iraqi opposition is something on
which America is prepared to go it alone.
As a strategy, the apparent shift in American Middle Eastern policy
has a lot to commend it. America cannot do much to encourage Israel
and the Palestinians to make peace, whereas its Iraqi policy needs an
overhaul. Moreover, in the early 1990s, its peace-making efforts
depended partly on the prestige it won in the Gulf war-a formative
experience for many of Mr Bush's team.
Still, as so often in the region, this shift of attention raises as
many questions as it answers. First, there is the sheer technical
difficulty of keeping a meaningful "dual use" list of exports as part
of a new sanctions regime. More generally, it may be impossible to
rebuild the Iraqi economy without helping the Iraqi army as well.
Next, the Iraqi opposition is not remotely a match for Mr Hussein's
brutal security forces, but any serious attempt to undermine him
could wreck attempts to build support for new sanctions.
Lastly, America might find it hard to distance itself from events in
Israel. The reason is not Israel itself, but the Palestinians. The
State Department is currently fretting that the Palestine Authority
might collapse, taking Yasser Arafat's declining authority with it,
and leaving Hamas guerrillas in control. That would provoke new
violence in Israel, and even greater anti-Israeli (and anti-American)
popular sentiment in the region. America would end up back where it
starts from-trying to patch up some sort of truce in Israel to
prevent problems there undermining its ambitions in Iraq.
_________________________________________________________
Last week's bombing of radar sites near Baghdad continued a ten-year
policy that has by now run its course. It should be replaced.
(The Economist)
AS THE faces in Washington have changed, so the world, in the shape
of the UN's Security Council, has concluded that its policy towards
Iraq needs, after ten painful years, to be rethought. George Bush's
new team had already made it clear, with a careful growl or two, that
its own rethinking would not be to the Iraqi government's liking. But
the American and British bombing of radar sites near Baghdad on
February 16th seems less a muscular expression of this growl than a
hangover from the stale routine of sanctions-and-bomb. Perhaps it is
the beginning of something new, bigger and better. But there is no
sign, as yet, of what that might be.
The rationale for the bombing is that Iraq had acquired new anti-
aircraft equipment that would threaten the American and British
pilots who patrol the no-fly zone over southern Iraq. Fair enough:
the pilots are owed their safety. The larger question is whether this
self-appointed patrol still benefits the people it was meant to
benefit. The northern "safe haven" does indeed protect the Kurds from
the Iraqi regime's worst designs. But Mr Hussein's toughies can
easily bully the unfortunate southerners without recourse to the
fixed-wing aircraft that the patrols are there to shoot down.
Moreover, Iraq's Arab neighbours, who were originally reassured by a
patrol that kept Iraqi aircraft out of their air space, no longer
feel their need. Kuwait apart, they do not these days believe
themselves threatened by Mr Hussein-though they are embarrassed both
by him and by the West's way of dealing with him.
The bombing has highlighted, yet again, the split in the Security
Council that has Russia, China and France on one side, America and
Britain on the other. Even so, as the council creeps its way towards
a new Iraqi policy, a consensus of sorts seems to have been emerging.
Although this is still immensely vague, it does accept, in a general
sense, that sanctions should be redirected in a way that prevents, or
at least deters, Mr Hussein from acquiring lethal weapons, while
releasing the Iraqi population from embargo-inflicted suffocation.
An irreproachable aim, but how to get there? Playing around with the
current system is unlikely to work. By now most observers believe
that getting weapons inspectors back into the country, after their
two years' exile, is a lost cause. On the humanitarian side, the
British proposal of "smart sanctions" offers an aspirin where surgery
is called for. Iraq can already sell as much oil as it wants,
receiving about 70% of the revenue in the shape of food and other
supplies. This arrangement allows people to get just about enough
calories. But most Iraqis, the new booming elite apart, are still
barely above survival level. To recover from its 11 years under the
sanctions battering-ram-which has crushed the country's industrial
and agricultural infrastructure, its water system, education and the
middle classes-Iraq needs the freedom, and overseas investment, of a
huge reconstruction effort.
Could this freedom and investment be combined with a rigorous new
system for preventing arms getting into Iraq? A fresh approach might
be to bargain toughly with Mr Hussein: in return for lifting
sanctions, inspectors would be posted at all points of entry. He
would be warned that cheating would bring retribution, as would
attempts to produce weapons of mass destruction. It would not be a
perfect solution, and he might well reject it. But it would be better
than the unguarded situation that prevails at present, when any old
weapons system can be spirited in, so long as the Iraqis can find
someone to sell it to them, paid for from the proceeds of smuggled
oil.
Bargaining with Mr Hussein is a prospect that sticks in the craw. The
overthrow of his vile regime has been the constant sub-text since the
first days of sanctions, with their limited official aim. Few would
argue that the sooner the man is unseated the better. So far, nobody
has found a way of doing so, though judging from certain early
signals, Mr Bush may decide to have a go. The danger is that this
desire to get rid of Mr Hussein, plus the knowledge that he is bound
to turn any new arrangement into a "victory" (but should a mature
nation care?), will take precedence over finding the most secure, and
most humane, way out of a dangerous blind alley.
Saddam Hussein may have gained the most from last week's American and
British air strike. And how much do his people gain from the no-fly
zones?
Saddam Hussein may have gained the most from last week's American and
British air strike. How much do his people gain from the no-fly zones?
TEN years after the Gulf war, the United States and Iraq are again
locked in struggle. The cast of characters looks strangely familiar.
But this time America's military strength is proving a poorer match
against Iraqi posturing. Of the nearly 40 nations that joined America
in the coalition to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, only Canada and
Kuwait have voiced open support for the American-British bombing, on
February 16th, of five air-defence sites near Baghdad.
The collapse of the alliance owes little to sympathy for the Iraqi
regime. Most Arabs see Saddam Hussein as a reckless bully. But the
plight of Iraqis besieged by UN sanctions, the skill of Iraqi
propaganda in linking their suffering with Palestinian suffering, and
Iraq's growing power to bestow generous rewards on sanctions-busting
suitors, have combined to create a powerful momentum.
In recent months, Iraqi diplomats have gone on the offensive. They
have successfully exploited Arab fears of a newly aggressive Israel,
and the general weariness with sanctions, to forge better ties both
in the region and outside it, with such countries as India and South
Korea. Scheduled flights now arrive in Baghdad from several Arab
capitals. Egypt and Syria claim that their new free-trade deals with
Iraq will triple the value of their trade to $2 billion and $1
billion a year respectively. Other countries are queuing up for
rewards-Iraq's oil reserves are, after all, second only to Saudi
Arabia's.
Increasingly, oil revenues are slipping into Iraq through holes in
the UN embargo. It is reckoned that since November, Iraq has largely
succeeded in getting customers to pay an average 40 cents surcharge
on every barrel of oil lifted, generating $500,000 daily in cash
outside the official UN-administered oil-for-food programme.
Since November Syria has joined Jordan and Turkey in raking in money
from Iraq's illicit oil. With 100,000 barrels of oil a day now
flowing across the border, Syria can raise exports of its own oil by
a similar amount. Asked if this is a breach of sanctions, Syrian
officials coyly reply that the Iraqi oil is a gift. Nothing in the UN
resolutions, they say, prevents Iraq from giving away the stuff.
Colin Powell, America's new secretary of state, will face tough
questioning on his Middle East tour this weekend. Egypt's president,
Hosni Mubarak, has already said bluntly that last week's raids did
nothing but "complicate matters", and that Iraq no longer represents
a threat. Jordan called the bombing illegal. Saudi Arabia, which is
increasingly embarrassed by public concern over America's use of air
bases in the kingdom for launching its attacks, condemned the air
strikes, reiterating its support for Iraqi sovereignty. Syria's vice-
president denounced the bombing as an attempt to sow discord among
Arabs at a time when Israel is punishing the Palestinians.
Much of the Iraqi opposition-in-exile-though not the groups favoured
by America-also voiced unease. The Higher Council for the Islamic
Revolution, based in Tehran but the most active opposition group in
the Shia south of Iraq (the region supposedly protected by the no-fly
zone), roundly condemned the raids. The action, said the group's
leader, Muhammad Baqer al-Hakim, made the Iraqi people "victims of a
power struggle between the United States and the Saddam regime".
Iraq's foreign minister is due to resume talks with Kofi Annan, the
UN's secretary-general, next week. But if he had had it in mind to
show flexibility, he can now claim a pretext for his government
continuing as cussed as ever. This leaves Iraq's neighbours in the
awkward position of having to maintain, or pretend to maintain, the
embargo, while both their feelings and their pockets tell them it is
time for the sanctions to end.
Mr Powell will reply to his Arab critics that the decision to bomb
the radar sites was justified by the increased danger to American and
British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones. He may also argue, as
British officials have done, that the raids, which killed two
civilians, were "humanitarian" since the patrols protect ordinary
Iraqis from Mr Hussein's savagery. But this argument, at least in
southern Iraq, is questionable.
America, Britain and France introduced the no-fly zone over the
northern quarter of Iraq in 1991. The Gulf war had ended, but the
Kurds, who live in the north, were in mortal danger from Mr Hussein's
wrath. The patrols helped to create a Kurdish "safe haven", which
endures to this day. The southern no-fly zone, however, has done much
less to help the Shias and marsh Arabs it was created to protect in
1992. It may save them from aerial attack but not from the Baghdad
regime's repression by tanks, artillery and helicopters.
Nonetheless, America and Britain justify the legitimacy of the no-fly
zones with Security Council resolutions that call on the Iraqi
government to stop persecuting its people. Yet these resolutions make
no mention of any flight-bans, let alone mandate the use of force to
maintain them. France, increasingly uncomfortable with America's and
Britain's unforgiving policy on Iraq, dropped out of the patrols
altogether in 1998.
Since then, the Iraqi army has taken to firing pot-shots at the
aircraft overhead. The intensity of these shoot-outs rises and falls,
depending on the mood both of the pilots and their Iraqi adversaries.
In theory, the rules of engagement allow the pilots to fire only in
self-defence. In practice, they have defined self-defence to include
punishment bombings after any Iraqi challenge to their authority. By
simply switching on radar, or firing a single salvo from an anti-
aircraft gun, the Iraqi army can bring down a hail of bombs on
anything deemed threatening, from command bunkers to radar stations,
and even anti-ship missiles.
American defence officials describe last week's bombing as
retaliation for aggressive Iraqi behaviour over several weeks, rather
than any specific incident. The Iraqis have improved their anti-
aircraft defences and use them more assertively. Their radar has been
upgraded, with Russian help, and they are building a fibre-optic
communications system, apparently of Chinese design, which was one of
the targets of the raid. The fibre-optic cabling was making it harder
to listen in to the Iraqi signals. In addition, the Iraqis have
learned from the Serbs how to confuse western aircraft by switching
different radar installations on and off in rapid succession.
These developments point to an escalating challenge, not to an
immediate danger. Iraq does not yet have the ability to target
western aircraft accurately. "They are more or less launching their
anti-aircraft missiles at random, though if this goes on, they will
be successful sooner or later," commented Andrew Brookes, a former
Royal Air Force officer now on the staff of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies. So far, they have not scored so much
as a near-miss.
America and Britain, on the other hand, have scored quite high. In
1999, for instance, America conducted more bombing raids on Iraq than
it did on Yugoslavia during the NATO air campaign that year. The
frequency of the bombardment has inevitably resulted in increasing
casualties. Iraq is suspected of exaggerating the figures, but UN
officials have confirmed many of the hundreds of civilian deaths it
has claimed. Even when the bombing does not kill anyone, it can
disrupt the distribution of humanitarian supplies, and on one
occasion it interrupted the export of the oil that pays for them.
(The Economist)
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Iraq figures sixth on US crude import supply list.
Iraq may be on top of Washington's sanctions hit list, but that
didn't stop American refiners from importing 613,000 b/d of Iraqi
crude oil last year, putting it in sixth place among US crude oil
suppliers. The Iraqi total was, however, 15% down on 1999's 725,000
____________________________________________
Iraq Promises Cooperation With U.N. If Sanctions Lifted.
PARIS, February 23 (Xinhua) - Iraq said on Friday that it will
cooperate with the United Nations in arms inspection if the sanctions
imposed against it since 1990 are lifted.
Visiting Iraqi Vice Foreign Minister Nizar Hamdoun told a press
conference here that Baghdad rules out a resumption of cooperation
with U.N. arms inspectors on the basis of Security Council Resolution
1284.
"In case of a lifting of sanctions, we will be ready to accept arms
inspections," said Hamdoun.
The U.N. resolution says that sanctions imposed on Iraq since 1990
following its invasion to Kuwait might be lifted step by step if Iraq
cooperates with U.N. inspectors to make sure that it no longer
possesses weapons of mass destruction.
On Thursday, a spokesman of the French Foreign Ministry said that
France hopes that Baghdad will cooperate with the United Nations by
accepting the U.N. resolution.
"This is the only way to take into account both the legitimate
concerns for security of the countries in the region and the
humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people," said the French foreign
ministry.
_________________________________________
Kofi Annan in response to Iraq.
By (AFP).
New York - The UN Security Council will have to decide whether
the "no-fly" zones imposed on Iraq by the US and Britain are legal,
Secretary General Kofi Annan said last night. "It is for the Security
Council to interpret its own resolutions. Therefore, it is for the
Security Council to address the lawfulness or otherwise of the
actions to which you refer in your letter," Mr Annan said in a letter
to the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mr Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
_______________________________________________________
Leading article - The special relationship must consist of more than
British eagerness to please.
THE DESIRE to be at the front of the queue of supplicants is
undignified. Tony Blair is delighted that he is the first European
leader to meet the new US President. Not that he will be the first
leader of any country to shake George Bush's hand. Jean Chretien, the
Canadian Prime Minister, has already been to the White House, and Mr
Bush has already been to Mexico to see Vicente Fox, the Mexican
president.
In any case, if Britain really did enjoy a special relationship with
the United States, it would not matter if Mr Blair were the 17th to
troop into the Oval Office after the Finnish deputy foreign minister.
The emphasis on being first speaks volumes for the strange insecurity
at the centre of Mr Blair's being. The Prime Minister was so keen to
get in first to see the Russian president that he paid Vladimir Putin
a state visit while he was still running for office, on an electoral
ticket written in the blood of Chechens.
Now the British are supposed to be grateful that the special
relationship has survived the departure and disgrace of Mr Blair's
fellow traveller on the Third Way, Bill Clinton. But there is a touch
of obsequiousness in Mr Blair's posture - as there is in our
continuing subsidiary role in bombing Iraq.
Uncritical support for whatever the President of the United States
does, whoever the President is, does little for this country's belief
in itself. If Mr Blair calculates that being the first to lick Mr
Bush's Texan boots is on balance in this country's interest, he
should share his reasoning with the rest of us, on whose behalf such
tribute is paid.
And, in fairness, the case for close relations is easily made. It
rests primarily on defence co-operation. The Falklands war could not
have been fought without US help, nor could this country currently
maintain a nuclear deterrent. For some on the left these are
undesirable objectives, and for some on the nationalist right,
dependence on the US fatally compromises our sovereignty. But for
most Britons the cost-benefit analysis favours the alliance.
However, that will not always be so in all possible circumstances. On
trade issues, Britain's interests often lie with Europe against
America: as in the disputes over unlabelled US genetically-modified
soya and over Europe's post-colonial responsibilities to Caribbean
banana producers, to take just two examples.
One of the dangers in Mr Bush's plans for a national missile defence
system, the so-called Star Wars II, is that it separates the
interests of the US and Europe. The isolationism of Americans can
only be strengthened by the illusion that their nation alone is
protected by an invisible anti-missile umbrella. Mr Blair's
willingness to allow his new special friend to use North Yorkshire as
an early-warning outpost of a system that will do nothing to protect
Britain is unwise.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with Mr Blair's ability to claim a
special relationship with all manner of international leaders, as he
has with Bill Clinton, George Bush, Gerhard Schroder, Jose Maria
Aznar, Jacques Chirac (but not Lionel Jospin), Romano Prodi, Vladimir
Putin, Zhu Rongji and a host of others. But the point of charming
people is to advance this country's interests. It is not an end in
itself, to which Britain's interests should be subjugated. Even if Mr
Blair has not conceded anything of substance to Mr Bush, appearances
do matter, and it does neither Mr Blair nor this country any good for
the Prime Minister to look like the President's loyal lapdog.
Britain's interests will sometimes conflict with America's, and Mr
Blair does not have to go down the French route of prejudiced anti-
Americanism to earn some credit by saying so.
(c) Independent Newspapers (UK)
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