Annan's deputy castigates UK and US
By Mark Turner
August 2, 2006
The Financial Times
Original Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ddf47fd8-21c2-11db-b650-0000779e2340.html
The UK should take a back seat and the US should allow other countries to share the lead in diplomatic efforts to resolve the Middle East crisis, the United Nations' deputy secretary general has warned.
Mark Malloch Brown, a Briton, said the image of the US and the UK presenting a joint leading role in resolving the situation risked creating the impression that this was Iraq redux, which has got to be countered.
His advice, offered three days after the British and American leaders met and held a joint press conference at the White House, came as major powers attempt this week to craft a United Nations resolution envisaging a long-term political solution to the violence, backed by an international force.
It's not helpful for it again to appear to be the team that led on Iraq. This cannot be perceived as a US-UK deal with Israel, Mr Malloch Brown said. One of my first bosses taught me it's really important to know not just when to lead but when to follow.
While the US was a critical broker of peace, he said that for the UK, this is one to follow. We need Chirac and Bush, or Chirac, Bush, and Mubarak and Abdullah, on a podium, not President Bush and Mr Blair. There's [also] got to be an outreach to Syria and Iran, even if it is not by the US.
Mr Malloch Brown spoke as Israeli forces pounded targets in southern Lebanon yesterday as the army executed orders from the government to expand the war against Hizbollah, the Shia Islamist movement.
The army said it killed 20 Hizbollah guerrillas inside the Lebanese border but did not confirm a claim by the organisation's television station that up to 35 Israelis were killed in fighting at the border town of Ainta al-Shaab.
The clashes came hours after Israel's security cabinet approved plans to expand the ground offensive and to reject international pressure for an immediate ceasefire.
Officials said the objective of the operations was to cleanse a border buffer zone of Hizbollah forces before the eventual deployment of an international force. The more the army can do, the less work has to be done by an international force, one senior official said.
Efforts to reach an international deal on Lebanon have been hampered by disagreement over the precise timing of a cessation of hostilities, which the UN and France have argued must come first in any agreement, but which the US has resisted before a wider political agreement.
Mr Malloch Brown suggested Britain could play a very constructive behind-the-scenes role, but also said it could help by publicly supporting an immediate end to the violence. Without a cessation of hostilities, the region is not going to listen to the other steps of a plan, he said.
This is where the UK is a crucial swing vote. It makes it that much harder for the last stalwarts to hold out.
In another piece of advice for the western powers, Mr Malloch Brown believed it was not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism.
He said: Hizbollah employs terrorist tactics, (but) it is an organisation . . . whose roots historically are completely separate and different from al-Qaeda.
It draws on a strong political well of support in southern Lebanon, and after the events of the last few weeks more deeply, and until that is addressed you are not going to stop it.
The success or failure of the process, he warned, would have global consequences. The demons have to be quieted across the wider Islamic world, where this has been a polarising and radicalising event, Mr Malloch Brown said.
I don't think the real danger is some kind of formal involvement of Syrian and Iran, and the war regionalising in that sense, so much as it is a dangerous radicalising of the whole Arab-Islamic world.
Any solution, he suggested, would need to offer Hizbollah a political future. Everybody would want a solution here which takes away the recruiting power of Hizbollah in the broader Arab world, he said.
That is one which . . . in a broader way addresses Lebanon's sovereignty and integrity in a way that allows Hizbollah a political as against a militia future inside an independent Lebanon.
Additional reporting by Harvey Morris in Jerusalem