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Bill and Tony's excruciating
adventure Tony Blair and
Bill Clinton were not the close pals they appeared to be, a new book about Mr
Blair's relations with George W. Bush and his predecessor reveals. Mr Blair found the
president "weird", and his team was heavily uncomplimentary about the
Clinton contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process. As for his
successor, Mr Blair bombarded Mr Bush with a stream of confidential advice,
particularly in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the US. The messages,
comparable with those sent by Churchill to Roosevelt during World War II, have
remained a secret but are revealed in the book Hug Them Close by Peter Riddell,
chief political commentator with The Times. British officials,
anxious to avoid the image of the Prime Minister seeming too close to the
President, have said little or nothing about them. The book reveals that Mr
Blair wrote them frequently, in a familiar jerky style, highlighting areas for
action. Many are thought to have been messages about Mr Blair's world travels as
he tried to keep the international coalition together for action against the
Taliban in Afghanistan. Charting the
Blair-Clinton relationship, Riddell says that in the early days Mr Blair seemed
overawed by the elder man's pyrotechnics. The relationship always had an
"edge", according to an adviser who was present at all their meetings
and saw it as "master and pupil". But after Mr Blair became Prime
Minister in 1997, he asserted himself and was never entirely at ease with Mr
Clinton when they were both in office. He did not like playing the junior
partner and told a senior civil servant he found Mr Clinton "weird". According to a
senior minister, Mr Clinton's role in Northern Ireland was "hugely
exaggerated". The two men fell out during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.
There were several clashes and what Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British
ambassador in Washington, told Riddell was a "very angry" 90-minute
phone call between the two. There was a "huge, monumental explosion"
from the president about a British briefing and an article in The New York
Times that suggested British unhappiness at Mr Clinton's reluctance to consider
ground troops. Riddell was told
by a senior civil servant Mr Blair would have liked to have been a president. Charles Mims |
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