Tony Blair, Middle East envoy, keeps low Gaza profile (News Feature)

Jan 7, 2009, 15:04 GMT

London - Tony Blair, not known for shunning the limelight, has kept an unusually low public profile on the Gaza conflagration, an issue at the centre of his job as the United Nations' special envoy to the Middle East, commentators have noted.

After a silence of 10 days, the voice of the former British prime minister sprung to public notice in a BBC radio interview from Jerusalem Tuesday.

Earlier, also from Jerusalem, he had informed broadcaster CNN's Christiane Amanpour about his views on how the Middle East conflict could be resolved.

Meanwhile in Britain, questions were being asked Wednesday about the notable absence of Blair from frontline efforts to tackle the Gaza flare-up.

'Didn't he know there was a war on?' asked the Northern Echo newspaper in a leader Wednesday.

'With the outbreak of open warfare on Gaza on December 27, you might have expected to see him immediately centre stage - attempting manfully to prise the warring parties apart,' the paper, based in the north-eastern county of Durham, added with a dose of sarcasm.

In the Middle East, correspondents said Blair's activities since he took over the job as special envoy of the so-called Middle East Quartet representing the UN, US, European Union and Russia, had been 'very much in the background.'

Not so, says Blair's spokesman, Matthew Doyle.

'He (Blair) has been working on this (Gaza) from day one, speaking to all parties,' said Doyle, citing a list ranging from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In Jerusalem earlier this week, Blair had talked to the Israeli leadership as he 'worked with others thrashing out the elements to get a ceasefire,' said Doyle.

And on Wednesday, Blair would be meeting Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris to receive a first-hand account of the French president's ceasefire mediation efforts.

So, perhaps, criticism of Blair's silence could prove to be premature. The limitations placed on him by the delicate Quartet role, and by the complexities of the Middle East issue, should not be underestimated, a British diplomat said.

Blair himself, an optimist by nature, said in the BBC interview that he remains convinced that the Middle East peace process can be brought to a successful conclusion.

'If we want to resolve this, we can. The most frustrating thing about this in my view is not that it's not resolvable, but that it is,' he said.

Three conditions, the main one being Palestinian unity, needed to be met to achieve a two-state solution.

Blair also referred to his experience as a peacemaker when he cited his involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process as an example for a future Middle East settlement.

In peace negotiations, wherever they took place, one basic principle had to be understood, said Blair: The acceptance that political objectives could only be attained by peaceful means.

But meanwhile, as Gaza, in Blair's words, remains 'hell' for its citizens, the former prime minister has an important fixture in Washington next week.

On Tuesday, he is due in the White House to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W Bush for his steadfast friendship and support during the Iraq war.