LONDON: Monday 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 back.

The thousands who protested over Blair’s visit to Beirut on Monday were of course making a more immediate connection: Tony Blair’s failure to call for ceasefire in the face of continued Israeli bombing of civilian years in the early days of the Lebanon war.

That call eventually in the company of German Chancellor Angela Merkel 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 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 by way of reminder 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 Aug 14, a ceasefire that has mostly held. “Frankly the best chance for Lebanon now is the implementation of Resolution 1701,” Blair declared. The statement begs the question what might have changed 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 now added up to little.

But Blair is not entirely responsible for his unproductive visit to Beirut. Blair met Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to talk ways of taking forward a lasting peace in the region. As expected, he did not meet 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 have dealt with both the Israeli government and that in Lebanon.

As Blair and Siniora talked, Hezbollah have taken the lead already in reconstruction efforts, as they pioneered provision of relief for refugees earlier. Hezbollah have worked to a plan in all this — the more they do for others, the more they gain for themselves. 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 cancelled. 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 leadership of half the country.

More than half of the population of four million are Shia, and almost all of them are loyal to Hezbollah. Following the recent bombing, several Sunni leaders and some Christians too have taken positions that were critical of Israel and to that extent 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, at present controlled almost entirely by Hezbollah. But here has been as little sign of the Lebanese moving in as of the Hezbollah moving out. Besides, as IPS 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 convince Hamas, now in leadership of the Palestinian Authority, to recognise Israel and to join a unity government with Fatah, the party that Hamas ousted in the polls earlier this year.

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 wracking his Labour Party. That dispute arose after Blair announced he would be stepping 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.

—Dawn/IPS News Service