MIDDLE EAST: Tony Blair kicks off first Mideast tour as Quartet envoy, to mixed reception

Tony Blair landed in Israel on Monday (July 23) for his first visit as an international envoy, hoping to help end 60 years of peacemaking failure since Britain handed Palestine to Jews and Arabs who are still fighting over it. "Mission Impossible" is what the sceptics have, inevitably, already called the newly retired British prime minister's mandate as the envoy for the four-power Quartet -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia. But Blair has said he has hopes of helping to solve a critical global problem. Blair is not expected to say much in public. He comes "very much in listening mode", his spokesman said last week. Blair met with Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, Monday afternoon, and was expected to meet with Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak and a top American diplomat in Jerusalem. He will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem on Tuesday (July 24), and with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in nearby Ramallah. Though Blair spoke last week of his hopes of progress, a jaded sense of deja vu pervades both Israeli and Palestinian society -- those few Israeli and Palestinian newspapers that devoted space to his arrival shows little optimism about it. Israeli officials have welcomed Blair's visit. Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for the Israeli government, said Blair's mandate to help build the Palestinian governmental institutions is both important for the Palestinians but also for Israel. "Seeing the Palestinians' capacity to rule, to have law and order, are issues which will help both the Palestinian people and Israel," said Eisin. But Blair's mission is complicated by the split in the Palestinian territories. Hamas's militant take-over of Gaza has separated it both physically and ideologically from the government headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, located in the West Bank. Fawzi Barhoum is a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza. He says that any diplomatic process must include Hamas. "So, we in Hamas consider this mission from Tony Blair as a peacemaker here in the Middle East, if it depends on cancelling, or discarding, or exceptions (excepting) Hamas from any type negotiations and dialogue, it will be recorded as defeat and failure to this mission," Barhoum told Reuters. Despite the split, Fayyad's information minister, Riad al-Maliki, said the Fayyad government had the authority to take action on behalf of all Palestinians. "Now, we will continue acting as caretaker government until a solution is achieved in order to overcome this constitutional crisis," said al-Maliki, at Ramallah press conference. "Until then, we will continue working as a normal government. We have all the authority to act as such. We have all the powers to work as such, and we are not going to limit ourselves to anything else but to really to act fully, as a full government with no restrictions whatsoever," said al-Maliki. Blair was asked by the Quartet simply to present by September an initial plan for building ruling institutions needed to establish a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. But that more limited mandate could expand later into a more direct peacemaking role between the parties, diplomats say.

ITN Source | July 24, 2007

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