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Posted on 10/31/2001 3:45:29 PM PST by Pokey78

TONY BLAIR’S dual mission to revive the Middle East peace process and shore up the anti-terrorism coalition hit severe trouble in Syria yesterday when he was confronted with the full ferocity of Muslim opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister’s troubled diplomatic mission is likely to get even bumpier today when he faces Palestinian demonstrations in Gaza and an Israeli Government angered by the platform that his Damascus visit gave Syria.

Mr Blair was publicly rebuffed yesterday when President Assad, who had invited him to Damascus, used a joint press conference in the presidential palace to attack the war in Afghanistan, describe Palestinian terrorist groups as freedom fighters, accept Taleban claims of hundreds of civilian casualties every day, and call Israel a terrorist state. The President compared Palestinian “resistance fighters” to General Charles de Gaulle in his efforts to resist the Nazi occupation in France.

The hostility towards the US-led bombing in Afghanistan was echoed in Riyadh last night as American jets bombed the Taleban frontlines north of Kabul.

On the home front there were further problems for Mr Blair when John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, told MPs that the campaign was not likely to bear fruit until the spring of next year. Mr Prescott, standing in at Prime Minister’s Questions, told MPs: “We will now begin the steady progress over the winter building up to the spring of next year of fragmenting, undermining and eventually destroying the Taleban regime.”

Downing Street sources insisted that Mr Prescott, well-known for verbal gaffes, was merely “stating the obvious”, but there were signs of annoyance that a specific timetable had been set out for the first time by a senior minister.

Mr Assad’s words are likely to produce a furious riposte from Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister. Mr Blair will meet him today before going to Gaza to see Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Israeli forces yesterday killed four Palestinians, including a Hamas militant targetted in a missile strike.

The Prime Minister, whose expression darkened during Mr Assad’s denunciation of the conduct of the war, was surprised by what appeared to be an ambush by the President. British sources said that Mr Assad clearly had to talk to his domestic audience.

Close colleagues of Mr Blair said that he had asked Mr Assad for help in getting the peace process under way again by urging hardline groups to restrain their activites. Mr Assad, who portrayed himself as the voice of moderate Islam, had asked for Mr Blair’s aid in helping him to control the extreme fundamentalists, the colleagues said.

Mr Blair welcomed a repeated condemnation from Mr Assad of the atrocities of September 11, but the President followed that up by saying that there was a difference between combating terrorism and war.

“We did not say that we supported an international coalition for launching a war,” he said. “We are always against war as a point of principle.”

Asked whether he was asking Mr Blair to stop the war, Mr Assad replied: “We are not asking for anything. We are not party to it, but we have a general viewpoint about war.

“At the same time we cannot accept what we see every day on the television screens: the killing of innocent civilians, hundreds of them dying every day. I do not think anybody in the West agrees to that.”

The Taleban said yesterday that the civilian death toll from the bombing now stood at 1,500.

Mr Blair, who according to aides took a deliberate decision not to raise the stakes by confronting Mr Assad in public about his comments, interjected that the West had done its utmost to minimise civilian casualties. He emphasised that the attacks in the US on September 11 were designed to maximise civilian casualties.

Syria wanted peace, Mr Assad said. “Israel, as far as we are concerned, has proved every day that it is against this peace. The desire for peace cannot co-exist with the desire for killing. Israel is prosecuting state terrorism regularly.”

Mr Blair later flew to Saudi Arabia for talks with King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, the acting ruler. The talks were previously postponed because of sensitivities over the bombing, but they were reinstated at the Saudis’ request.

At a press briefing last night in Riyadh Mr Blair said that he and and the Saudi leadership agreed that there should be a broad-based government to replace the Taleban and that the two countries would work together to achieve it.

Brushing aside questions about the alleged Saudi refusal to allow use of its air bases for attacks on Afghanistan, Mr Blair said that they had “responded positively to every request made to them”.

Asked whether he was disappointed at being rebuffed by Mr Assad, he said: “You have to understand there are different perspectives people bring to this. You can either stay out of the dialogue or get into it and try to build understanding.” He added that there was a far greater understanding than may have appeared the case in public.

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