LONDON - It was not perhaps the best day
for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to talk
peace in Lebanon. The date was a reminder how
closely Britain, led by Blair, has backed the
US-led "war on terror" since those attacks in New
York and Washington five years ago.
The
thousands who protested over Blair's visit to
Beirut on Monday were of course making a more
immediate connection: Blair's failure to call for
a ceasefire in the face of continued Israeli
bombing of civilians in the
early days of the Lebanon war.
When that
call eventually came in the company of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, it was too late and too
ineffectual: Blair is seen as the unquestioning
buddy of US President George W Bush, and any anger
over US policies in the Middle East transfers
inevitably to Blair.
As a front-ranking
member of "the team that led on Iraq", Blair is
poorly placed to take any initiatives with any
credibility in the Middle East, United Nations
deputy secretary general Mark Malloch Brown said
ahead of Blair's visit to Beirut.
It is
not clear what Blair hoped to achieve in Beirut.
He has done no more than reiterate support for UN
Resolution 1701 under which the ceasefire was
reached on August 14, a ceasefire that has mostly
held. "Frankly, the best chance for Lebanon now is
the implementation of Resolution 1701," Blair
declared. The statement raises the question of
what difference it would have made if he had not
come to Beirut to say that.
Blair spoke of
his "deep sympathy" with the families of those who
had lost someone in the Israeli bombing. But in
the absence of timely action to attempt to stop
the bombing, and given his status as Bush's
political twin, those words of condolence added up
to little.
But Blair is not entirely
responsible for his unproductive visit to Beirut.
He met with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora
to talk about ways of moving toward a lasting
peace in the region. As expected, he did not meet
with the Hezbollah leadership - who are the
government within the government, or even the
government above the government, as some see it.
An agreement in words with the formal
Lebanese leadership has never been the source of
friction; the trouble has been in dealing with
Hezbollah and in the way that Hezbollah has dealt
with both the Israeli government and that in
Lebanon.
As Blair and Siniora talked,
Hezbollah has taken the lead already in
reconstruction efforts, as it pioneered provision
of relief for refugees earlier. Hezbollah has
worked to a purpose in all this - the more it does
for others, the more it gains for itself. Blair's
visit to Beirut leaves that "elephant in the room"
untouched, and to that extent it fails to carry
conviction.
The Speaker of the parliament
and two ministers from Hezbollah stayed away from
meetings with Blair. The Hezbollah leadership had
earlier asked for Blair's visit to be canceled.
They failed to stop Blair but made sure that the
protests outside and the boycott of meetings with
Blair would deliver their message - that Blair was
speaking, at most, to the leadership of half the
country. About half of the population of 4 million
are Shi'ite, and almost all of them are loyal to
Hezbollah.
After the recent bombing
attacks, several Sunni leaders and some Christians
too have taken positions that are critical of
Israel, and to that extent are one with the
Hezbollah.
There were other forms of
silence that spoke out loud through Blair's visit.
The UN resolution calls for the Lebanese armed
forces to take control of the south of the
country, currently controlled almost entirely by
Hezbollah. But there have been little sign of the
Lebanese moving in and little sign of Hezbollah
moving out. Besides, as Inter Press Service
correspondents have reported earlier from Beirut,
the Lebanese army itself is being filled rapidly
with Hezbollah supporters.
On his visit
earlier to Israel and the Palestinian territories,
Blair failed to persuade the militant group Hamas,
now in leadership of the Palestinian Authority, to
recognize Israel and to join a unity government
with Fatah, the party that Hamas ousted in the
polls this year. Thus Blair rounds off his trip
with a blank in Lebanon, as in the Palestinian
territories.
Blair might just attempt to
gain more at home than in the Middle East. An
outcry over his successor is racking the Labour
Party. That dispute arose after Blair announced he
would step down within a year. Through his visit
to the Middle East, Blair is attempting to create
the image of a successful statesman to overshadow
his cracking image as a failed politician.
By present accounts, he has succeeded
neither in the Middle East nor at home.
