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Blair heads to Washington as calls mount for ceasefire
By Prashant Rao
AFP
LONDON
Petroleumworld.com 07 28 06
British Prime Minister Tony Blair heads to Washington on Friday while at home calls continue to mount for him to demand an immediate ceasefire in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Blair will hold talks with US President George W. Bush, who has refused to call for a swift ceasefire and cautioned Thursday against a "fake peace" to end the ongoing Israeli-Lebanese conflict.
Some 42 notable figures signed a letter published on the front page of The Independent newspaper on Friday calling for Blair to ally Britain to the United Nations and demand an immediate ceasefire.
They signatories, which include two former cabinet ministers, six former ambassadors, a former deputy leader of Blair's Labour Party and the leader of the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, called on the leader to "make urgent representations to Israel to end its disproportionate and counter-productive response to Hezbollah's aggression, and also to bring all pressure possible on Hezbollah to end its attacks on Israel and return the abducted soldiers."
"Your government has left Britain isolated from world opinion over Iraq, and we refuse to countenance a repeat of such a foreign policy disaster."
More than 400 people have died in Lebanon as Israel has conducted a widespread bombing campaign after the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others more than two weeks ago.
Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 50 Israelis since the conflict began.
Meanwhile, 14 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) -- including charities Oxfam and World Vision, trade union UNISON and the Muslim Council of Britain -- jointly took out full-page newspaper advertisements in The Times, The Guardian and The Independent, publishing an open letter to Blair.
They urged readers to send text messages in support of the letter, with the resulting petition to be handed to Blair's Downing Street office next week.
The letter said Britain was risking civilian lives by refusing to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
It called on Blair to "use your meeting with President Bush today to publicly call for an immediate ceasefire by all sides before more civilians die."
The Guardian newspaper said on its front page that Blair was to press Bush to back a ceasefire "as a matter of urgency" as part of a UN Security Council resolution next week.
In a White House meeting Friday, Blair was expected to voice concern that pro-West Arab governments were "getting squeezed" by the crisis, and say that the longer it continues, the stronger Islamist extremist groups will become, the daily reported, citing unnamed Downing Street sources.
In its editorial, The Independent said: "If ever there was a time for Mr Blair to urge his friend and ally that Israel must be reined in, it has surely arrived.
"Yet we can have no confidence that Mr Blair will put any such pressure on Mr Bush when they meet today," the paper said, accusing Britain and the United States of conspiring to "ruin" the consensus calling for an immediate ceasefire at Wednesday's international conference in Rome on the crisis.
The Daily Telegraph's editorial dismissed the prime minister and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett's efforts at diplomacy as "remarkably feeble".
"The foreign secretary's profile has been so low as to be almost invisible," it said.
Beckett, it said, "has picked a spurious quarrel with Washington" over allegations two US chartered Airbus A310 cargo planes laden with GBU-28 bombs landed at Scotland's Prestwick Airport over the weekend for refuelling and a crew rest on the way to Israel.
Beckett said that she had raised the report with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and would issue a formal complaint to Washington if the report was found to be true.
AFP 28 0200 GMT 07 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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