Decisive week in Blair's life: Is it time to go? Mustapha Karkouti

Opinion, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Decisive week in Blair's life: Is it time to go?

Mustapha Karkouti

Special to Gulf News | 30-09-2003

To get rid of a prime minister in the United Kingdom has always been extremely difficult. And to get rid of this prime minister may yet prove to be almost impossible, as Prime Minister Tony Blair may turn out to be the toughest the country has ever seen to occupy that post.

Or, could he? Well, I guess we have to wait and see how his Labour Party, currently convening its annual conference in the seaside resort of Bournemouth, would react to its leader's keynote speech. This conference is the Labour leader's tenth and toughest.

There are many issues on which the Party's grassroots and its leader find themselves at odds with. These include some acute and tricky problems. If Blair fails to properly address, and subsequently deliver, on these issues, he might end up being forced to attend an unceremonial farewell reception.

Reforming the National Health Service, and what has become known as "Foundation Hospitals", may prove fatal if Blair's government eventually decided to go ahead with the PM's reform programme despite the vast majority opposing it. Former Health Secretary Frank Dobson, and union leader, Dave Prentis, are both against it. But it is very likely the government will ignore any conference vote on this issue.

Topping-up the university fees is another controversial issue. Many Labour backbenchers believe such additional fees will discourage working-class children from going to universities. Nevertheless, the final confrontation will not be determined during this conference. Ammunition are being kept aside for the real battle in the Commons later this year.

With the findings of Lord Hutton's enquiry into the mysterious circumstances that led to the death of the Ministry of Defence's senior expert on weapons of mass destruction, Dr. David Kelly, still to be announced in late November or early December, it is too early to predict how the outcome will impact the British PM.

For the moment Blair has escaped serious exposure on the issue of WMD to Hutton. The fact that the Law Lord did not call the prime minister for cross-examining, as he did with all other witnesses, could make one conclude that Hutton's verdict will not be necessarily impeachable.

The impression one gets from all interviews Blair so generously bestowed on the media on the eve of the Labour conference is that any criticism Hutton makes of Number 10 is bound to hurt the PM, but it will not slay him.

Anyhow, the pressure on Blair has been building elsewhere. The UK Intelligence and Security Committee (which combines all top secret services) report showed the PM went to war in Iraq having been advised by Security Intelligence Service that it would increase Al Qaida activity - the very opposite of what he said the war was intended to achieve. It has also been revealed in a recent book that Blair ignored last-minute counsel from his own Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, that war might be catastrophic "and we could easily sit it out".

But the most damaging of all is last week's draft report by the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG), consisting of 1400 WMD inspectors, admitting that it could not find a single trace of this ghastly weapon in Iraq.

The UN WMD Chief Inspector Hans Blix also stated last week that former dictator Saddam Hussain destroyed all such weapons he had after the 1991 Gulf War.

Consequently, for the first time since the war was launched against Saddam in March, 2003, the UK prime minister will face the most serious political trouble which might threaten his status as Labour leader.

If the case is proved that the ISG has found no such weapons in Iraq and believes none were built in the immediate years before the war, then in the next few weeks the prime minister's critics will have a field day.

Ever since the war ended, the British prime minister and his foreign and defence secretaries have insisted forcefully that they were confident the weapons would be found.

Unless the weapons are really found, the backlash against the war, which is already growing in the wake of the Hutton inquiry, is almost certain to escalate.

The prime minister has regularly used Saddam's refusal to comply with the UN's demands on him to disarm as clear evidence that he had something to hide. If it turns out that all he was hiding was his relative defencelessness, it will expose the British and American intelligence services to ridicule.

Evidently, with each passing day the prime minister's room to manoeuvre has narrowed. Anti-war opinion has hardened while scepticism and suspicion have increased. It may be that a couple of months or so ago, the discovery of some evidence that Saddam was developing WMD or had hidden his weapons before the conflict might have been enough.

But the series of inquiries into the war indicating the threat from Iraq was not as serious as suggested, and the recent comments by Blix that Saddam destroyed his weapons over a decade ago, have added to public distrust. What Blair needs now is something concrete from the survey.

On his way out

Nevertheless, Blair does not look like a leader on his way out. His biographer, Andrew Rawnsley, listed in the Observer, Sunday, six main ways in which a British leader can be finished: scandal, 'palace coup' within the cabinet, revolt by his party, health reasons or/and death, being voted out by the electorate. Finally, and very rarely, a leader decides to go of his own volition (Harold Wilson).

So far, Blair is not prepared to accept the redundancy offer. He still has a job to do, he told the Observer, and he is staying "until the job is done".

But Rawnsley suggested that Blair might surprise everybody "by suddenly giving it up".

The writer is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London. He can be contacted at mkarkouti@gulfnews.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).