AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
London: British Prime Minister Tony Blair returned home from the United States Wednesday to a gathering political storm over his support for Israel in its war against Hezbollah. While lauded in the United States for backing the US and Israeli position on the conflict, and for his efforts to fight global warming, his standing in Britain is less sure.
Blair already faced widespread opposition before jetting off Friday, even from within his party and government, for refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire or condemn Israeli airstrikes as disproportionate.
That has been seen as giving Israel the green light to continue its deadly campaign against the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
Those criticisms have mounted during his time away, despite his attempts to juggle scheduled engagements in San Francisco and Los Angeles with frantic diplomacy to bring the three-week-old conflict to an end.
Blair's British Airways Boeing 777 charter jet touched down at London's Heathrow airport Wednesday lunchtime after an energy-sapping 10-hour flight from Los Angeles. The mood here is likely to have done little for his jet-lag.
British media reports suggested that at least five members of his cabinet inner circle, including Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, are privately concerned about his close alignment with the White House.
The parliamentary chairwoman of his governing Labour Party, Ann Clywd — herself a Blair loyalist — said Wednesday that the “vast majority” of backbench lawmakers were critical of Israel and wanted an immediate ceasefire.
Former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw has voiced strong concern about Blair's position, while United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is reported to have been so concerned about the prime minister's stance that he urged Straw to intervene.
Add that to the unease about the use of British airports by US and Israeli cargo planes to restock the Jewish state's military arsenal and Blair faces a potentially torrid time at his monthly news conference Thursday.
A drawn-out conflict could even affect the run-up to Labour's annual conference, scheduled for late September
For the moment, though, Blair is spared parliamentary scrutiny.Britain's lower chamber House of Commons is currently on summer recess, although there have been calls for it to be reconvened to discuss the Middle East crisis.
Through a combination of recent domestic policy woes and controversy dogging his senior ministers and party, as well as lingering opposition to British involvement in Iraq, Blair's approval rating here is at an all-time low.
His reception in the United States over the last five days could not have been more different.
After talks at the White House on the Middle East Friday, Bush hailed his “close relationship” with Blair, saying the so-called “special relationship” between Britain and the United States was “stronger than ever”.
“We share the same values, the same goals and the same determination to advance freedom and to defeat terror across the world,” Bush told a news conference.
Blair was also warmly received while promoting British business interests on the US west coast. Cisco Systems chief executive John Chambers called Blair “one of the best communicators I've ever seen” and “one of the top leaders in the world”.
On tackling climate change — a subject about which Blair is unquestionably passionate — luminaries from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to his close friend, former US president Bill Clinton, had nothing but praise.
Blair's lengthy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council Tuesday was similarly well-received by the assembled 2,000 guests — prompting suggestions that a lucrative lecture circuit job could await.
But in the meantime, it is what he said there — calling for a radical rethink of how the international community approaches tackling extremism and the Middle East — that will be picked over in the days to come.
One British news outlet described it as a foreign policy “U-turn”, a claim quickly denied by Blair's office. Others suggested it was an attempt to quell concern within his own party ranks over his position on Lebanon.
Whether it does so remains to be seen.
