Blair gets the heave-ho as Quartet envoy

From the Financial Times, two articles on the failure of Tony Blair’s peace envoy role, and a third on Blair disease, from 2014.

Deal: Tony Blair in Jenin at the launch of the mobile phone network Wataniyain 2009. As Quartet envoy he promote two contracts worth more than £1billion in Palestine with British Gas and Wataniya – both major clients of J P Morgan, the U.S. investment bank which employs him as a senior adviser. Photo from Office of Tony Blair, Office of the Quartet Representative.

Tony Blair poised to step back from Middle East peace envoy role

By Alex Barker, John Reed and Geoff Dyer, Financial Times
March 15, 2015

Tony Blair is preparing to step back from his role as a Middle East peace envoy as the US and Europe review policy options before Israel’s election this week.

After nearly eight years as an envoy for the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators, the former British prime minister has recognised that a frontline role is no longer tenable, according to several insiders. Mr Blair’s move comes amid deep unease in parts of Washington and Brussels over his poor relations with senior Palestinian Authority figures and sprawling business interests.

The former UK premier is embarking on delicate talks to recast his Middle East role but is determined to remain part of the peace process. Mr Blair met John Kerry, US secretary of state, on Saturday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to discuss a possible role change. He also spoke to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who is pushing for a revamp of the Quartet and for Europe to take a more robust stance on Israel’s conduct.

If Mr Blair does step aside or take an informal position it would end an arrangement that has made him a fixture of Middle East diplomacy while conducting private business with some regional governments that he also deals with through the Quartet, which represents the UN, US, EU and Russia.

No final decisions have been taken but a clarification of Mr Blair’s role could come this week. His office declined to comment.

Although Mr Kerry is a supporter of Mr Blair’s continued involvement, some other senior figures in Washington told the Financial Times they wanted the former prime minister to step aside. Concerns include his multiple charitable, diplomatic and commercial interests. Ms Mogherini, meanwhile, is looking beyond Mr Blair as she recalibrates Europe’s approach and appoints a new EU Middle East envoy.

Brussels stopped funding Mr Blair’s office in 2012 and he was not invited to the last minister-level meeting of the Quartet, which took place in Munich in February and was convened by Ms Mogherini. Officials said the talks were primarily political and unrelated to Mr Blair’s economic mandate.

Some senior diplomats said Mr Blair was being eased out of the position.

“It is long overdue,” said one diplomat briefed on the talks. “He has been ineffective in this job. He has no credibility in this part of the world.”

Another person close to the Obama administration said: “Tony Blair is neither an asset nor a liability but his current role is no longer viable.”

At the behest of the George W Bush administration, Mr Blair was appointed to the Quartet position in 2007, shortly after serving as British prime minister for a decade. His energetic support for the Iraq war had made him a controversial figure among many Palestinians from the outset.
Founded in 2002, the Quartet has largely been sidelined over the past two years from peace process diplomacy while the Obama administration tried to broker talks. Those negotiations fell apart last year.

Mr Blair told friends last week he was seeking to reconfigure his role and had grown weary of being blamed for the Quartet’s shortcomings that were beyond his narrow remit and responsibilities.
His role as Middle East envoy has come under increasing criticism with questions raised about his dual role as super-diplomat and businessman. Mr Blair’s clients have included countries such as Peru, Colombia, Kuwait, Vietnam and Kazakhstan. His corporate roster has included PetroSaudi, an oil company with links to the Saudi royal family, JPMorgan and Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi wealth fund.

A senior western official familiar with the Quartet denied that there had been any “‎effort to push Blair out of his current role”. Any decision would need to be taken by consensus and the Quartet had yet to discuss a remit change at ministerial level.

Mr Kerry and Mr Blair are weighing potential options to give the former prime minister a more political role, which puts to better use his sway in the Gulf, Egypt and Israel. In a sign of his priorities, Mr Blair has also made several trips to Gaza recently, stressing the importance of Palestinian unity.

If a new Israeli government is elected this week led by the centre-left, the Obama administration might try to revive its stalled peace talks. However, if Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power with a rightwing government that appears critical of a two-state solution, there will be growing pressure from the EU and the UN to become more involved.

Palestinians have been scathingly critical of Mr Blair’s modest record as Quartet representative, not least because the role was limited to economic affairs, an issue inextricable from the failed peace process and Israel’s four and a half decade old occupation of Palestinian lands.
European diplomats in Jerusalem say they have been pushing for the representative role to be expanded and redefined. “I’m not seeing that much added value,” a senior diplomat said.

Mr Blair, who makes periodic visits to the Quartet Representative’s office in a walled compound in Palestinian East Jerusalem, was charged with overseeing a $4bn plan to stimulate growth and investment in the Palestinian territories, announced by the US secretary of state in 2013, when Israel and the Palestinians were close to launching their last, unsuccessful round of peace talks.

The plan, devised with advice from the consultancy McKinsey, was meant to run in parallel with peace talks and would have relied heavily on Israeli goodwill and permits relaxing strict curbs over freedom of movement and planning permissions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Additional reporting Heba Saleh in Cairo

Few results to show for Tony Blair in contentious Middle East role

By John Reed in Jerusalem and Roula Khalaf in London
March 15, 2015

Tony Blair’s role as representative of the “Middle East Quartet” has provided the former British prime minister with the opportunity to remain a player in the game of high-stakes politics in the region. His specific mission, however, has been far less glamorous than the big title might suggest.

As envoy for the EU, UN, US and Russia, the position involved limited objectives: to promote economic development and improve governance in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Almost eight years after his appointment, there are few accomplishments to point to, amid a contracting Palestinian economy, an ugly rupture in Palestinian-Israeli relations and a humanitarian crisis and stalled rebuilding effort in the Gaza Strip following last year’s war.
Mr Blair’s role was controversial from the start. It came at the recommendation of the George W Bush administration and, say former European diplomats, caused consternation in Europe and the UN. The role had no term limit and no clear requirement of reviews.

In the region, too, Mr Blair’s involvement in the Iraq war made him an unpopular choice to pursue the role of peace envoy. Success, moreover, depended on progress in political negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, which collapsed in acrimony last year amid growing pessimism about a two-state solution for the conflict.

In Jerusalem, the main charge against Mr Blair was that he should never have accepted the job’s limited parameters. With no direct political mandate, the role was restricted to pleading with the Israelis on minor economic issues and, in so doing, it diminished the international community’s clout in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

“Politically, things are stagnating, and the economy has done much worse over the past couple of years because of Israeli restrictions and the absence of a political outlook,” said Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian deputy prime minister and economy minister. “You can’t blame it on one party but, obviously, we Palestinians were hoping for much more than this from the international community, and the Quartet was supposed to represent all the international community.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Quartet Representative Tony Blair attend a meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, 2011. Photo by Reuters

As early as September 2008, aid agencies were questioning the Quartet’s lack of progress, and urged the group to “signal strong opposition to continued settlement expansion” by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The growth of Israeli settlements on occupied land, which has continued throughout Mr Blair’s tenure, has been a key irritant in peace talks, while Israel’s restrictions on movement and planning permits in the occupied territories is constricting the Palestinian economy, according to the World Bank and other donor agencies.

People close to Mr Blair argue that he cannot be blamed for the failure of the peace process. They say he has invested political capital and time on an unpaid mission because he is passionate about promoting peace.

Mr Blair’s office succeeded in racking up some accomplishments, including pressing Israel to release radio frequencies to allow the setting up of Wataniya Mobile, the second-biggest mobile provider in the West Bank. He lobbied Israeli authorities to open roadblocks to allow more trucks into the blockaded Gaza Strip, and to give the UK gas group BG and Palestinian officials permission to launch Gaza Marine, a stalled $1bn offshore drilling project.

But his role as Quartet representative has also come under increasing criticism as his private business has expanded through the umbrella group Tony Blair Associates. Critics have questioned whether the lines between envoy and businessman have blurred.

His client list in the Middle East has included the Kuwait government and an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and he was in the process of opening an office in Abu Dhabi, where he is an unofficial adviser to the crown prince.

“The questions about his business dealings have always been there,” said a former senior western official, adding that it was “not clear what he would be able to contribute to the peace process going forward”.

Tony Blair greets the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, at No 10 while in office in 2006. His ‘multimillion-pound deal to advise Kazakhstan’s leadership on good governance has produced no change for the better or advance of democratic rights in the authoritarian nation, freedom campaigners say.’ Joanna Lillis in Almaty, The Guardian. Photo by Getty Images

In 2008, on a visit to Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, Mr Blair met President Nursultan Nazarbayev and discussed “a wide range of issues, including the Middle East”. His consultancy later added Kazakhstan to its list of clients.

Allies of Mr Blair insist that the Quartet and his business interests have always been separate. “I’ve never seen any conflict of interest,” said one person close to him.

In the West Bank and Jerusalem, Palestinians were less concerned by these alleged conflicts than by the narrow “economic peace” they accused Mr Blair’s office of pursuing — widely seen as a cop-out in the absence of a political solution to Israel’s long occupation of Palestinian territories.

Anis Nacrour, a former adviser to Mr Blair in Jerusalem, described the Quartet as a “smokescreen” in a 2011 interview after leaving his job. “At the end of the day, all this was buying time for the Israeli government to do whatever it wanted to do,” he said of the Quartet’s activities.

When asked what code of conduct applied to Mr Blair, Mr Nacrour said: “I think he makes his own rules depending on the experience he has as former prime minister for over 10 years.”

Palestinian leaders were angered when Mr Blair urged them not to pursue statehood in the UN; the world body went on to award them non-member observer status in November 2012. Some accused him of being too close to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, or of “selling” Israeli policies.

Allies of Mr Blair play down his troubled relationship with the Palestinians. “When it comes to Palestinian politics, is criticism a sign of failure or a badge of honour?” one asked.

But as speculation mounts that Mr Blair is about to resign, officials in Ramallah say they would be glad to see him go. “I hope so,” said one senior government official.

Additional reporting by Geoff Dyer

“Azerbaijan’s pompous kleptocrat Ilham Aliyev [above, Right], whose 11-year-old son Heydar owns nine luxury mansions set on the Palm Jumeirah worth $44 million, has appointed British former Prime Minister Tony Blair as an advisor to a consortium which is lobbying for a pipeline to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe.” James Debono, Malta Today.

Another outbreak of Blair Disease

By Simon Kuper, Financial Times
March 21, 2014

At a reception recently I met the former president of a small post-communist country. I know that’s what he was because he told me so immediately. He then began dropping names of London-based ex-Soviet oligarchs – his friends and business associates, he implied.

This man had Blair Disease, named for ex-prime minister Tony Blair: the growing propensity of former heads of government to monetise their service. Blair Disease is damaging but easily cured.

If you are super-rich, you probably have an ex-leader working for you, like an overpaid tennis coach. Blair, for instance, has shilled for JPMorgan Chase, Qatar and Kazakhstan’s cuddly regime. Then there’s the modern ex-leader’s staple: giving paid speeches to rich people. Blair’s Queen Anne mansion outside London differs from the “museum of corruption” recently vacated by Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovich chiefly in degree, taste and the period when the money was made. Both men got rich through running countries. It’s just that Blair’s version was legal.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy have terrible Blair Disease too. A year before Schröder left the chancellorship, he identified Vladimir Putin as a “flawless democrat”. Soon afterwards, as if by magic, Schröder was hired by the Russian gas company Gazprom. Last month he was chastising German media for their bias against the Sochi Olympics. He himself discerned a “wonderful atmosphere” in Sochi.

Sarkozy leapt nimbly from ruling France to speaking at banking conferences. At a Goldman Sachs do in November he announced, in English, “I am ready to run a business” – and with friends like that it won’t be a start-up in his garage.

No previous European ex-leaders made this kind of dough. Just 20 years ago the British ex-prime minister Harold Wilson was showing up at the House of Lords stricken with Alzheimer’s, led by his nurse, because he needed the daily attendance fee.

“Replenishing the ol’ coffers,” as George W Bush put it, is an older tradition for US presidents. However, none has ever made out like Bill Clinton, who earned $89m from speeches from 2001 to 2011. “I never had money until I got out of the White House,” he said, “but I’ve done reasonably well since.” In fact, through the magic of campaign funding, his ex-presidency could help buy his wife’s presidency.

If George W Bush makes less, it’s because he rarely goes out. Even Republicans in Dallas, where he lives, seldom see him. My personal theory: Bush is hiding because he feels shame. His presidency failed on his own terms: he didn’t win his wars, and then almost destroyed capitalism. Worse, his vice-president pushed him around. Yet even Bush swiftly racked up $15m from ex-presidential speechifying.

Most ex-leaders link up with the plutocratic class while still in office. These people have been planning their careers since kindergarten. They don’t leave politics and then suddenly think, “I wonder what to do?” Even while leader they’re looking ahead, and so every meeting with a rich person is a semi-conscious job interview. Furthermore, through hanging out with rich people, they start thinking of themselves as poor. The US Republican congressman Phil Gingrey spoke for struggling politicians everywhere when he grumbled: “I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year.”

And so, consciously or not, farsighted leaders behave like future employees of the rich. President Sarkozy’s services included helping Qatar get the football World Cup. After he lost office, Qatar tapped him to run a private equity fund. He hasn’t done it, probably because he plans to become president again in 2017. By then he may be rich enough not to need embarrassing campaign donations.
. . .
The sight of ex-leaders joining the 0.1 per cent is the perfect election present to populist parties. Blair, a notional leftist, is Britain’s most vivid symbol of elite self-enrichment. Populists couldn’t have made him up.

Selling out arguably damages even the ex-leaders themselves. These people care about their reputations. When Blair resigned in 2007, the House of Commons gave him an ovation. Today most Britons would agree with Greg Dyke, unseated as head of the BBC by Blair’s government, who says: “I think Blair now is a very sad man, rich, but [he] betrayed everything the Labour party was about.”
Blair after Downing Street could have helped Britain. Running a state is the sort of job that you only get your head around by the time you leave it. Shortly before resigning, Blair bowled over some visitors to Downing Street with a brilliant analysis of Putin. That’s what 10 years as PM gives you. If only he’d then become a disinterested voice in British politics. Whenever his ousted predecessor John Major spoke in parliament on his special subject, Northern Ireland, MPs actually listened. In Germany, the word Altkanzler – former chancellor – long denoted a moral institution, a servant of the nation who spoke with unmatched experience. That could have been Schröder.

It’s easy to cure Blair Disease: bar ex-leaders from doing paid work for private interests. This free measure would instantly deflate populism, keep experience inside government and attract a better class of person to the job.

Links
Israel’s new regional friend – Shia Azerbaijan, Despotic Azerbaijan is useful to Israel (as well as Tony Blair) because as well as replacing Turkey as a friendly state through which the oil pipe-line runs, it also spends loads on buying weapons from Israel.

Israel gains an airfield called Azerbaijan – short haul to Iran, Foreign Policy reports on a deal giving Israel use of Azerbaijan’s airfields, March 2012.