LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Tony Blair: Bush Administration
built 237 days ago
Tony Blair's greatest political strength has always been his remarkable, gifted way with words. In comparison with tongue-twisted American leaders like President Bush, Mr. Blair sounds positively eloquent. But even before the Iraq fiasco, British listeners, who hear him far more frequently, were beginning to find him glib.
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Blair's Global Environment Failures: It's Not Just Climate Change - George Bush's unwillingness to back Tony Blair's climate change initiatives for the G8 Summit in July is not the only recent global initiative of Blair's to flop. Less publicized, but just as prized by green NGOs, was Blair's recent failure to garner support for a global convention on forestry. While making a big deal about listening to Africans, he is not listening to developing countries when it comes to the environment. He is taking his cue from greens groups that have other ambitions.
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Blair, who stepped down as Britain's prime minister last year, was in Israel on Thursday, where President Bush was on a three-day visit to show support for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks following seven years of violence. Blair was scheduled to meet with Bush on Friday.
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With his faith in the power of multilateralism and the international community, Blair subscribes to a foreign policy that shares as much with American liberal interventionists as it does with the unilateral neoconservatives and realists who divide the Bush administration. (For a shorthand definition of the distinctions between "neocons," "realcons," and liberal interventionists, scroll down to the bottom of this "Explainer" column.) Bush urges striking Iraq mainly out of pre-emptive self-defense. Blair, on the other hand, stresses largely humanitarian motives. Of course, Blair will mention security at times, just as Bush will mention justice or human rights. But their areas of primary emphasis are the reverse. According to this week's Time, Britain's forthcoming Iraq dossier will emphasize Saddam's atrocities, including his torture of his own citizens and his murder of 100,000 Kurds to preserve his grip on power.
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Blair and Bush will ... discuss debt cancellation for poor countries. The Bush Administration has, so far, opposed cancellation of debts owed to the International Monetary Fund. It also has been heavily lobbied by Wayne Murdy, a Bush campaign contributor and head of Newmont Mining, to oppose the use of gold sales to help finance cancellation. The UK position also has serious weaknesses, including that it would only temporarily relieve countries of payment obligations.
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Blair had been widely criticised from within his own party for championing the policy on Iraq of U.S. President George W. Bush. There is a general perception in the UK that Blair repeatedly misled the UK parliament and public in echoing the U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that invading and occupying Iraq was legal. As a result, some Members of Parliament have formed a group to call for impeachment hearings.
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