Blair Seeks U.N. Role In Post-War Iraq

Prime Minister Tony Blair says the United States and its allies must broaden their agenda beyond Iraq and help build peace in the Middle East and across the globe.

Speaking on his way to his meeting Wednesday and Thursday with President Bush at Camp David, Blair rejected British lawmakers' suggestions that Washington was solely to blame for fractures in the Atlantic alliance.

His twin aims of healing a gaping transatlantic rift between America and Europe and binding the United Nations into the reconstruction of Iraq, represent huge challenges with Washington still smarting at a snub from the Security Council, CBS News reports.

Blair faced pointed questions in the House of Commons, underlining a persistent strain of skepticism in Britain about U.S. intentions in Iraq, the Middle East and in global diplomacy generally.

David Taylor, a member of Blair's Labor party, posed the sharpest query, asking if the prime minister would question the Bush administration's "scorn for multinational diplomacy and their cavalier disregard for the United Nations."

"I don't think I'll be saying quite that, no," Blair replied.

The prime minister, Mr. Bush's staunchest ally in confronting Iraq, took oblique shots at France and other nations opposing military action.

"But I also think it is important that we make sure that we broaden the agenda that we present to the world, which is why I believe that issues like the Middle East peace process are also particularly at this moment important," he said.

As he left Britain, Blair told reporters that it was premature to have detailed talks on governing postwar Iraq. "We don't know what the situation is going to be when you get to the post-conflict situation," he said.

Blair told the Commons that there had been "some limited form of uprising" by the Shiite people in the southern Iraqi city of Basra overnight, but that he was wary of encouraging premature rebellion. British troops outside the city are hoping the residents will help them defeat Iraqi forces.

"And we've got to be careful that we know we have the support in place able to help them before we encourage them to do things that may lead to their death," Blair said.

The moment for revolt, he added, "may be some way off."

Labor lawmaker Chris Bryant said many British people were "skeptical if not cynical about the U.S. position" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He demanded an "unambiguous and definite date" for publishing the so-called road map of steps toward a settlement, and asked Blair to seek a U.S. commitment to a United Nations resolution on reconstruction in Iraq.

"I do believe ... that the commitment of the United States is there to making sure that the road map is not merely published but then carried through," Blair said.

He added that President Bush, at a U.S.-British-Spanish summit in the Azores just before the war, had pledged to seek U.N. support for reconstruction.

The prime minister said he is confident that President Bush supports further United Nations resolutions — first to restore aid under the oil-for-food program, and then as the basis for the nation's reconstruction.

"I do not believe there will be the need to persuade the president of the involvement of the United Nations," Blair said.