Guess Who's Packing For D.C.?

You could say he has connections.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's eldest son has landed a prestigious position as an intern for an influential committee on Capitol Hill.

Euan Blair, 21, will serve a short, unpaid internship with the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives in Washington D.C.

The Rules Committee - which has a powerful role in the legislative process - is chaired by California GOP Rep. David Dreier, who has been in a leadership role on the committee since 1999 and has presided over many reforms in the way the House does business. For the past four years, he has also been chairman of his state's Republican delegation, the largest in Congress.

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reports that Dreier will mentor Blair, whose father leads Britain's traditionally left-of-center Labour Party. It said the internship would last three months.

A spokesman for the prime minister's office says the prime minister's son also hopes for an internship with a Democratic member of Congress.

A stint working as an intern in Congress or the White House is highly prized by bright young Americans with political ambitions, and competition for such placements is intense.

Euan Blair has just completed an undergraduate degree course in ancient history at Bristol University, a well-regarded college in southern England. He is due to graduate this year, according to the prime minister's office.

The internship, apparently a nod to the internationalism of today's politics, puts Euan in sight of what could be a political career beginning even earlier than those of his parents, who are both lawyers.

Tony Blair - who like his wife, Cherie, is a lawyer - was already running for Parliament in his 20s, winning his first election at age 30.

As prime minister, Blair has had a close relationship with the U.S. and its presidents dating back to the Clinton administration. It has continued through the Bush presidency, despite a furor in both countries over Blair's backing of the war in Iraq and in particular the assertion before the war that Saddam Hussein likely had weapons of mass destruction.

Blair's dented image on the home front was boosted a bit early this month when his government led the charge for the proposal - ultimately accepted by Group of Eight finance ministers - for the cancellation of at least $40 billion of debt owed by the world's poorest nations, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa.