February 20, 2002	Wednesday	Zilhaj 7, 1422

LONDON: The word that describes Tony Blair’s attitude towards George Bush is insouciant. He seems worried about almost nothing. The main thing is that he remains inside the loop. The two men talk often. They have most intimate and honest dealings. These conversations underwrite the British claim never yet to have been taken by surprise, in any phase of the campaign against terrorism. They leave Blair very sure of Britain’s relations with the US, which have been marked by concerted action as well as words: a lot less crucial than Pakistan’s but, as usual, more important than that of any other European.

Blair also accepts the shift that has smoothly taken place in Washington’s analysis, carrying the anti-terror targeting far beyond Al Qaeda and into the countries that are producing weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. From global networks to an axis of national evils, in one easy slide. Not all EU member states are so ready to agree with this, though none of them, apparently, has conveyed as much to the prime minister’s office. He feels comfortable on all sides. The stories of transatlantic rifts, in his opinion, are exaggerated. The possibility that the most painful rift might cleave through his own person, as he becomes less a bridge than an illusion linking America to Europe, does not arise.

Behind the scenes, in the ceaseless turmoil of diplomatic activity between London and Washington, things are a little more complicated. The unevenness of leverage is showing, starting in Afghanistan itself, where the British-led peacekeeping force is desperately short of manpower. Though Mr Blair was pleased that, after Christmas, the US offered more resources to rebuild Afghanistan than it had done before, peacekeeping work by soldiers is another matter. A senior British diplomat was sent to Washington last week to press Secretary Rumsfeld to provide an American element for this work, but got an adamantly dusty reply. There will be no US peacekeepers, he was told.

There are also disagreements over Iran, which for the US is becoming a more immediate source of rage than Iraq. Iran’s nuclear supplies from Russia, Iran’s alleged arms deliveries to the Palestinians, Iran’s double-talk about not assisting Al Qaeda operatives on the run have all fired up indignation in Washington, which has not helped Britain’s self-appointed role as cultivator of the moderate politicians against the extremist clerics inside the Iranian power elite. UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the hapless exponent of that policy, does not carry much clout with any of the US leadership.

The big challenge is Iraq, the main WMD state, where the escalation of US threats to act is meeting continued British wishful thinking that such action will not happen any time soon. Every relevant politician and official says the same neat thing: that they will be shown a plan if an invasion is to happen, and have so far not been shown one. The closest they have got to it is the intelligence that several plans have been presented to the president, by the Pentagon and the CIA, and he has rejected all of them, mainly on the grounds that he doesn’t yet believe there are indigenous forces on the Iraqi ground who can do the job the Northern Alliance did as US proxies in the takeover of Kabul.

This is a highly relevant point. The stoking-up of the case for regime-change in Baghdad has begun to make it seem inevitable that an attack will be launched. The American press resounds with battle-plans. Colin Powell seems to have come off the fence. The momentum builds. And yet, without credible oppositionist forces in place, the strategy risks getting muddled and therefore very dangerous.

For Bush the stakes in Iraq will be much higher than they have been against Al Qaeda. Any attack against Iraq that allows Saddam Hussein to be spirited into the mountains will be deemed a calamitous failure. If an invasion fail, US voters would destroy the president as soon as they had the chance. This is not a risk he will lightly take, even on the back of his unremitting oratory since Kabul fell. A reading of Blair is that he fervently hopes that such hard-headed assessments of political survival prevail.

Parts of London, maybe including himself, see an Iraqi invasion as a fearful distraction from the defeat of global terror networks, a task that requires, above all, intelligence collaboration from many Islamic states that would be far more opposed than Europe to an invasion plan. Meanwhile, Blair does have options, improbable though it may be that he sees them this way.

If Blair were to express even one-tenth of EU external affairs commissioner Chris Patten’s anguished critique of the US , he could have twice the influence. He will doubtless cling to the second option, which is to accept, without any abrupt attempt to shape it, whatever the US decides on. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.