Translated material
Blair's mandate
Russia has put forward two conditions for a new envoy to the Middle East
Russia has agreed to the appointment of Tony Blair , who resigned yesterday as Prime Minister of Great Britain, as a special envoy for international mediators in the Middle East settlement. "We will welcome Blair's efforts to normalize the situation in the Palestinian territories," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced last night.The day before, reports appeared in Western media that Moscow had objections to the candidacy for this post. Perhaps they disappeared after the telephone conversation the day before yesterday between Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Actually, Moscow had no objections to Blair’s personality,” Russian diplomats who accompanied Sergei Lavrov on his two-day trip to the Middle East, which ended yesterday, assured the Vremya Novostei observer. “Rather, there was a demand to clearly state, which was finally done, the mandate of the envoy, his powers, since in fact a new post was being established,” our interlocutors explain.
The four international mediators, formed about six years ago, include Russia, the United States, the European Union and the UN. Decisions in the quartet are made unanimously, and without Moscow's consent, 54-year-old Tony Blair would not be able to take this post.
So, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair is starting a new and thankless job - reconciling Israelis and Arabs. He was personally asked to do this by US President George W. Bush, whose Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is looking for new forms of mediation in the Middle East, since previous schemes are no longer producing results. It is no coincidence that Ms. Rice, citing her busy schedule, refused to convene a quartet these days in Cairo at the level of heads of foreign affairs agencies. Instead, the quartet met in Jerusalem at the lower-ranking level of diplomats. From Russia, the special representative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Yakovlev, took part in the meeting. And his boss, Mr. Lavrov, went on a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority instead of Egypt. In Jerusalem yesterday he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and in the city of Ramallah, on the West Bank, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr. Abbas is expected in Moscow soon. Perhaps the visit will take place after his tour to Europe (on Friday he will be in France, and then Switzerland is not excluded). These trips, including to Russia, were on the president’s schedule a week ago, but were postponed due to dramatic events in the Gaza Strip, where in mid-June Mahmoud Abbas’s opponents from the radical Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) took power by force.
Vremya Novostei's sources in the Russian Foreign Ministry explained that the quartet's special envoy, Tony Blair, will have broader powers than his predecessor James Wolfensohn: “The situation in the region has changed, now there are different tasks, and they are much larger.” Let us recall that the mission of the former head of the World Bank James Wolfensohn in the Middle East ended ingloriously. He honestly admitted his failure, working in the region for just over a year and resigning in May 2006, four months after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in the autonomy. Since then, the post of the Quartet's senior representative has remained vacant.
An experienced financier and diplomat, Wolfensohn lamented the “emergence in the region of problems that are beyond the scope” of his competence. But he was faced with a more modest task than is now facing his successor. This was reflected in the title of his position - “special representative of the quartet for disengagement in the Gaza Strip.” Wolfensohn's scope of work included overseeing the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip - they were liquidated under the leadership of then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in August-September 2005. Wolfensohn was also responsible for promoting the economic recovery of Gaza - but this did not work out.
Documents listing Tony Blair's responsibilities could be released today. The agreement took place yesterday. Russia defended at least two positions. Firstly, do not infringe on the interests of the Palestinians under the new scheme, that is, do not allow a tilt towards the Israelis, given the strong ties of the United States and Great Britain with Israel. Secondly, do not allow such an influential politician as Blair to escape the control of the quartet, including Moscow. As Sergei Lavrov stated, “the quartet has completed the development of the mandate of the new representative, which is based on the need to do everything to meet the urgent needs of the Palestinians and on close work under the leadership of the quartet.”
Now Special Envoy Blair will deal not only with the Gaza Strip, like Wolfensohn, but, to a greater extent, with the West Bank. In general, his goals, according to our sources in Moscow, are “state building and economic assistance to the Palestinians, and, of course, reconciliation between Arabs and Israelis.” Blair has already stated that he will seek to create an Arab state of Palestine next to the Jewish state of Israel. This almost coincided with the words of Sergei Lavrov, spoken in Ramallah: “We condemn any attempts to undermine the statehood of the Palestinians, which we want to create as soon as possible.” True, after a trip to the region, for some reason the minister said with optimism that “peace in the Middle East settlement will be established soon.”