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Tony Blair's Second Coming as Middle East Peacekeeper

[ Times-UK] Lesley White - In his new role as Middle East envoy, our former prime minister, now 55, looks tanned and relaxed. It is oddly startling to see again the man who ran our lives for a decade, now reveling in his new role. He looks like a man given a second chance, a prisoner released from jail. His job is to help prepare the Palestinians for statehood. "It's true that I feel a great sense of responsibility for this region. I don't feel I'm putting something right, because I see all this as the same basic struggle: getting rid of Saddam, the Palestinian peace process, pushing back against Iran, sorting out Lebanon, a struggle about which the Western world is pretty much asleep." The American Colony Hotel in eastern Jerusalem is where you find Tony Blair for at least a week of every month. He has 13 full-time diplomats at his disposal, some provided by the UN and foreign donors, some from the World Bank, the Gendarmerie, the Foreign Office. "You will not get a peace deal first. It has to begin on the ground, with people seeing changes in their daily lives. I think the two sides want peace. I am optimistic." "You have to have some understanding of Israel's problem, which, by and large, they think Europeans don't. If Israel got out of the West Bank tomorrow, Hamas would take over."
2008-07-07 01:00:00
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