Fifty-two former British diplomats delivered a damning critique on Monday of Prime Minister Tony Blair's close alliance with US President George W. Bush and their "doomed" Middle East policy.
The former diplomats, many of whom served as ambassadors in Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other parts of the region, sent a joint letter to Downing Street and released it to the media.
Among those signing the letter are former ambassadors to Israel, Iraq and other Middle Eastern capitals, as well as senior British envoys to the UN. They accused both governments of abandoning important principles of impartiality in the Holy Land, while engaging in poor planning and military overkill against Iraqi resistance forces in the Sunni Muslim areas west of Baghdad and in Shiite Muslim strongholds around Najaf.
PHOTO: REUTERS
They told Blair they had "watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close cooperation with the United States." They condemned a US strategy in Iraq they see as over-reliant on force.
"Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Falluja, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition," they said.
But the spark for the letter came from an abrupt change in policy towards the Palestinians announced by Bush in Washington last month and apparently endorsed by Blair. Bush, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, supported the continuation of the bulk of the illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
Such a letter from diplomats with wide experience in the region -- one of them, Richard Muir, was ambassador to Kuwait until 2002 -- is an embarrassment for Blair.
The former diplomats said Blair needed to show as a "matter of the highest urgency" he has real influence in Washington.
"If that is unacceptable or unwelcome, there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure," they wrote.
A Downing Street spokesman played down the criticism: "The [government's] position on the issues raised in this letter are well-known. The authors of the letter are entitled to express their views."
The spokesman defended the government's policies as energetic in the pursuit of peace and stability. He insisted that the Sharon plan offered an opportunity to return to peace negotiations.
Foreign Office minister Mike O'Brien said yesterday that Britain has to be ``realistic'' about the limits of its influence on the US. He said the government had exerted some influence on Bush's policies, especially in encouraging him to accept the principle of a Palestinian state.
"I think we have got to be realistic. We can influence the United States but we can't control the superpower. They listen to our quiet diplomacy but they also have their own policy,'' O'Brien said in an interview with BBC radio.
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