Tony Blair, British prime minister, will on Wednesday hold talks with President George W. Bush at Camp David, hoping to persuade him that the United Nations should be "centrally involved" in administering Iraq once Saddam Hussein is defeated.

As coalition forces press towards Baghdad, Mr Blair will visit the US for a one-day summit which may determine not only the future of post-Saddam Iraq but the prospects of repairing relations between the US and other major European Union states once the war is over.

Mr Blair on Tuesday made it clear for the first time that he wants to persuade the Bush administration to shift power from a US military governor to a UN civil administration after the war ends. "It is common ground between us that the UN has got to be involved in post-conflict Iraq," Mr Blair told reporters.

The prime minister said later: "I can assure you that it is our desire to ensure that the UN . . . are centrally involved and that is in the interests of the international community and also the coalition forces."

After spending the first week of the war out of the limelight, Mr Bush has begun to take on the mantle of a wartime president, consoling the families of dead and captured US combatants and seeking to provide a voice of steadfast determination in the early days of heavy casualties.

"We cannot know the duration of this war," he said on Tuesday. "Yet we know its outcome; we will prevail. The Iraqi regime will be disarmed. The Iraqi regime will be ended. The Iraqi people will be free. And our world will be more secure and peaceful."

Despite Mr Blair's hopes, British officials privately admit that many in the US administration have no stomach left for a UN role beyond providing humanitarian aid. "There is a ferocious debate going on inside the administration about all this," said one British official. "Things may not be moving in the direction that we would wish. The prime minister must get Bush to buy into into this idea of a UN role and fight for it."

Even if Mr Bush backs a UN resolution giving it such a role, some UK officials believe questions could arise over whether France would back it, knowing that it legitimises the US-UK military occupation of Iraq.

The Blair/Bush summit will be their third bilateral meeting in the US in just six months - but Wednesday's meeting will be of particular significance. Mr Blair and Jack Straw, foreign secretary, will meet the leading members of Mr Bush's war council, including Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Colin Powell, secretary of state, and Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser.

The meeting is expected to discuss the course of the military campaign and the prospects for the Middle East peace process.

A central feature will be US plans to publish the "roadmap" setting out the path to the creation of a Palestinian state, which the US hopes will be the basis for a lasting peace with Israel. But at his press conference on Tuesday, Mr Blair cast the significance of Wednesday's meeting in wider terms, warning that the US and Europe would have to come together following the failure of the diplomatic process at the UN in the run-up to military action.

"There is, at the end of this, going to have to be a discussion and indeed a reckoning about the relations between America and Europe," he said. "There is no point in hiding it, this [the Iraq crisis] has thrown up a profound issue about the nature of the transatlantic alliance."

Mr Blair added: "It is not just the responsibility on me but on all of us, whether in the French or other European systems or in the USA, to find a way of putting it back together, because otherwise the conflicts in the world will be less susceptible of solution and the dangers the world faces will be exacerbated."

After seeing Mr Bush, Mr Blair will fly to New York where he will hold talks with Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, about the need for the security council to agree a new oil-for-food programme for Iraq.

The US and British leaders also want to make progress on an international donor effort to fund post-war reconstruction, bringing in financial and technical contributions from Japan and the EU.

But while there is confidence that progress will be made on these fronts, it will be far harder to get the White House to agree a resolution guaranteeing a role for the UN after the Iraq war is over.

THE CRIMINALS AT THE UN
& THE AXIS OF WEASELS

The criminals are getting desperate. The criminals who had sweet deals with Saddam, selling him weapons and all kinds of nasty stuff in exchange for oil. France, Germany, Russia, China, and the UN. Saddam's partners in crime. His aiders and abettors. His co-conspirators. They are demanding that the US and UK step aside after the war in Iraq and let them take over. They are trying desperately to keep the truth of their corruption and wickedness from being revealed. This cannot be permitted. Let the truth be known! Let the world see them for what they are -- Saddam's Whores!

There is no way in hell that Bush can allow Annan, Chirac, or any of the other criminals who made dirty deals with Saddam, to have anything to do with post-war Iraq. All they want to do is cover everything up. All they want to do is get their hands on the WMD, hide their complicity, and then pass the WMD on to terrorists. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be allowed to take possession of the WMD. This cannot be stressed more strongly. The depth of their corruption knows no bounds, and they cannot be permitted to pervert and destroy everything we and our coalition are accomplishing in Iraq with our blood.

Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, and all the others who stood against the United States and Great Britain in the righteous cause of eliminating Saddam Hussein's evil and barbaric regime and liberating the people of Iraq, must not be allowed to have any participation in post-war Iraq. Their crimes must end with the fall of the regime. The coalition of the willing is disarming Iraq, and only the coalition of the willing must be responsible for what is done in post-war Iraq.

France, Germany, Russia, China,
and the UN=Saddam's Whores

Enough is enough. These criminals prohibited us from ridding the earth of Hussein back in 1991. And for the past twelve years, they have propped him up.

They sold him weapons and they sold him equipment.

They violated their own sanctions, and they smuggled contraband disguised as humanitarian aid.

They concocted the fiction of inspections not to disarm Hussein, but to give him cover and run interference for him while he turned his nation into a poison factory.

They NEVER had any intention of disarming him, and EVERY intention of using him as a proxy to wage war against the United States and Israel.

They signed on to Resolution 1441 never intending to actually enforce it, and when President George W. Bush forced their hand, they declared themselves as the bonafide enemies that they are. And now that the coalition of the willing led by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair is doing the job that they refused to do, they are issuing threats and making demands. They insist that we wash our hands of the matter so, like the jackals they are, they can sink their teeth into the newly liberated Iraq not to help it in any way, but to cover their tracks, hide evidence of their crimes, take possession of the WMD, and distribute it to whomever they will.

This cannot stand. This cannot be allowed. The United Nations and the Axis of Weasels, who refused to fulfill their duty to humanity, have abrogated all rights to the future of liberated Iraq. They refused to do the heavy lifting, so they cannot be permitted to perpetrate this fraud. They have absolutely no right to what they claim. They had their chance, and they chose to slink away rather than lead. They cannot be allowed to slink their way back.

The United States of America and Great Britain have accepted the responsibilities of liberating Iraq and protecting the world from weapons of mass destruction, and they must not relinquish these responsibilities. Least of all to those who by their actions have revealed themselves to be unworthy of trust and unable to accept a position of leadership in this world. For their treachery, the traitor UN and the traitor nations must be rewarded with irrelevancy, for that is what they deserve.

From the Prime Minister's press conference 03/25/2003

QUESTION:

Isn't your need to go to Washington and to New York, 5 days into this conflict, precisely underlining the reality that you do not have agreement with the administration about a role for the United Nations immediately after Iraq is captured if you like, that the United States are talking actively of an American civil administration in the initial months, a military commander in a civil administration but with no role at that central core for the United Nations, and that your view is completely different from that. That is the view coming out of the State Department and the Pentagon, but your view is in quite variance to that and that is why you need to go.

PRIME MINISTER:

No, that is not the reason for going. In fact we had anticipated having this meeting some time ago, indeed before the conflict began. It is important not just to discuss the role of the UN in post-conflict Iraq, but other issues as well, the ones that I have described to you. But there is no doubt in my mind whatever, and you must realise that one of the benefits of the relationship that I have is that I am not having to pick up the newspapers and read what the State Department may be saying, or the Pentagon may be saying, I am actually talking to the President every day, so I know what the situation is. And the situation is that it is common ground between us that the UN has got to be involved in the post-conflict Iraq, it is important for the coalition forces, as I said a moment or two ago. Now we need to get the whole set of details about how that works and the timing of it that we need to get right, that is true, but I have got no doubt at all that we will.

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THE CRIMINALS AT THE UN& THE AXIS OF WEASELS