Maybe that explains why they're so fond of blowing each other up, I suggest. He laughs. “I know many of the key ayatollahs and chief rabbis, and these people are not religious bigots,” he says. “Most of the key religious leaders in Iraq, Israel and Palestine are not bigots. The ones that are causing trouble have mainly come in from outside.”
White's independence makes him potentially useful to both sides, but there are dangers, too. The Americans want information. I overhear snatches of his conversation with the State Department. They are planning a conference in Cairo: who should they invite, who are the Palestinians with clout? A lot of his foundation's funding comes from the US; isn't there a danger of becoming an adjunct to American policy?
“There's a danger of being used, yes,” he admits. “But you have to be wise to that.”
He believes his main advantage as a negotiator — he has been a key figure in numerous hostage negotiations — is that he will talk to anyone. “You can't just work with the nice people,” he says. “There's a lot of talk about getting the moderates to say more. But it's not the moderates who cause the problems. So I don't just work with nice people. I work with everyone and treat them all as human beings, even the bad guys.”
White, who was also the vicar in Baghdad under Saddam and once shared an uneasy dinner with his two sons, remains a firm supporter of the war — “Saddam had to be got rid of, and there was no way the Iraqi people could do it themselves” — but he accepts that what followed was a disaster. “The result has been terrible and we have to take some responsibility for everything that has happened. We made three big mistakes. One, we didn't close the borders, so all the insurgents and bad guys got in. Two, we got rid of all the Iraqi security forces — the police, the army, the intelligence. And three, the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] ended too soon because of American domestic issues like the presidential election.”
White, who is 42, hails from unexotic Bexley in Kent. His father was an Anglo-Indian whose parents left India after independence because they were deemed to have been part of the colonial structure. After school, he trained to work in an operating theatre, but in his early 20s decided to become a priest. “I was holding the cardiac arrest bleep one night at St. Thomas's hospital, went outside and stood opposite Big Ben to do my evening prayers, and that's when I felt the call.” He studied theology at Cambridge, and Judaism and Islam in Israel.
While his manner can be overwhelming and his attitude hard to read, there is no doubting his largeness of spirit. As well as coping with his own MS — “I take my tablets; I'm very fortunate that it's never been a major issue in my life; I've never had time to allow it to be.”
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