Tony Blair’s Syrian connection

Tony Blair has staked much of his personal and political prestige on attempting to tame the young Syrian President, Bashar Assad. His hard work has been rewarded with embarrassment and humiliation. When the Prime Minister visited Damascus in October 2001, preaching a message of sweet reason and an end to violence, he was forced to listen in silence as Assad defended Palestinian suicide bombers and compared them to the French Resistance fighters against the Nazis: ‘Resistance to liberate land is an international right that no one can deny.’ Then, when Bashar visited London in December, he made Blair squirm again as he described the plethora of Palestinian terror headquarters in Damascus as ‘press offices’. And between lunch in Downing Street and afternoon tea with the Queen, he managed to paint his host as ‘an ostrich that buries its head in the sand’ for believing that a reformed Palestinian Authority would produce peace in the Middle East.