Blame game over political fallout from volcanic cloud (News Feature)

By Anna Tomforde Apr 21, 2010, 13:50 GMT

London - 'It's a bit much to play politics with a volcanic eruption,' Britain's Transport Secretary Andrew (Lord) Adonis said Wednesday.

Adonis was rejecting criticism that Britain, which took the lead in ordering a shutdown of most of Europe's airspace last week, was guilty of mishandling the crisis.

'They swung from one extreme to the other. From being extremely cautious to being extremely cavalier,' a political analyst, who did not want to be named, told the German Press-Agency dpa Wednesday.

He suggested that the surprise decision to reopen airspace late Tuesday had been taken under increasing pressure from the public, the media, and the aviation industry.

Not so, Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted.

'It was the first responsibility of the government to make sure that safety was paramount. We would never be forgiven if we had let planes fly and there was a real danger to people's lives,' he said.

Adonis explained that the key turning point in determining a 'safe threshold' for volcanic ash had come with safety advice given to an emergency video conference of European Union (EU) Transport Ministers Monday.

'The whole of Europe has been in the same position, acting according to the same safety rules,' said Adonis. 'European safety regulators have been working to properly understand the impact of the ash cloud which has come from Iceland.'

However, it was up to the air traffic control bodies to act on the advice they received. 'As a politician, I don't second-guess safety regulators' said Adonis.

But with the crisis happening right in the middle of an election campaign, opposition parties have seized the opportunity to accuse the government of having presided over a 'fiasco' of unprecedented proportions.

'Six days into the crisis we're suddenly told that there are actually levels of ash which are compatible with safe flying,' noted Theresa Villiers, the Conservatives' transport spokeswoman.

Willie Walsh, the outspoken chief executive of British Airways (BA), bluntly dismissed the need for a blanket ban on flying and said there were plenty of lessons to be learnt.

The crisis also sparked fresh criticism at European level. 'Europe did not react well. We must adjust instructions (for such cases). It was unprecedented,' French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

'The problem is that everyone is forced to adapt to the country that takes the harshest measures,' a European diplomat was cited as telling French daily Liberation Wednesday.

'And if a country doesn't do it, it will be affected in any case by its neighbour's decision, because of the interdependence of European aviation.'

EU Commission spokeswoman Helen Kearns told the BBC there had been a 'failure to differentiate between different zones of risk' and member states had been 'interpreting the same scientific maps in different ways.'

Jo Leinen, a prominent German centre-left member of the European parliament, said the crisis had shown that Europe was 'ill-prepared' for natural disasters. 'We see that the crisis management has many shortcomings,' he told the European parliament.

In Britain, the government was also facing an angry backlash from an estimated 150,000 travellers stranded around the world as a result of the shutdown.

Earlier this week, Brown pledged that Madrid would become the 'hub' for returning British tourists who would then be collected by a fleet of 100 coaches from the Spanish capital.

As it turned out, only five coaches were available to carry 250 Britons to the ferry ports of northern France.

Brown's unprecedented decision to deploy two Royal Navy vessels to collect civilians stranded in French ports in a 'non-conflict situation' has also come under attack. 'Royal Navy sails for Brown,' mocked the Evening Standard newspaper.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former chairman of the government's crisis committee, told the Times: 'I would question whether the Royal Navy warships really exist for this type of mission and indeed whether such a task would have been contemplated outside an election.'