Northern Ireland would appear to be a curious backdrop indeed for a war summit between George W Bush and Tony Blair -- the third such meeting in as many weeks. Alexander Alistair writes from Belfast The US president sees the world in black and white, but the Northern Ireland peace process has been defined by shades of highly nuanced grey. For Tony Blair, some presidential glister on the stuttering Northern Ireland agreement was much-needed payback for his career-threatening support of the United States, and, after flying out to the US six times to meet George Bush, it was essential for Blair that the president for once visited him. For President Bush, however, meeting and greeting former terrorists was little more than a distraction from his main concern of the war in Iraq and, in particular, what follows. And yet again, America's strategy promises to further entrench global divisions, leaving Blair diplomatically stranded between his American ally and the rest of the world. At the Azores summit in March -- four days before the attack on Iraq began -- Blair secured commitments from Bush that were to prove vital in facing off his domestic opponents. One of these was the White House's commitment to publishing the Middle East "roadmap" -- an assurance Blair proudly announced to deep scepticism a week before the war began. But the Palestinian issue is one of the few on which Tony Blair shares similar convictions to his own Labour Party; he is genuinely committed to restarting a peace process and a just settlement for the Palestinians. George Bush had assured him that the roadmap would be published as soon as a new Palestinian prime minister was appointed. But with Abu-Mazen duly sworn into office, the roadmap, unsurprisingly, has yet to appear. And even if it is published, few expect it to lead anywhere worth going to. Besides, having just launched an illegal military occupation of Iraq, exactly what moral authority would the US and Britain have over Israel in any negotiations? -- an issue the wily Sharon would no doubt exploit mercilessly. Chief among Bush's concessions to Blair, however, was a commitment to a "vital" role in Iraq for the United Nations, which would include seeking "on an urgent basis" a new Security Council resolution. For Tony Blair, having defied the Security Council once in going to war, he can ill afford to defy it again by supporting what would be, in effect, an illegal US military occupation. He desperately needs to mend fences with France and Germany and to restore some semblance of international credibility if he is to mollify his critics at home. Blair can just about swallow an initial phase of a US military administration, as long as it leads to the swift installation of a broadly representative and UN-backed Iraqi Interim Authority before leading to elections. But the US apparently has very different ideas. A presidential directive signed months ago hands over responsibility of Iraq to the Pentagon through the US Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (ORHA), headed by former general Jay Garner. The ORHA is currently in Kuwait, finalising plans to carve up Iraq into departments overseen by neo-conservative cronies, as well as handing out lucrative reconstruction contracts exclusively to US companies. Of course no one could seriously argue that the Iraqis would somehow prefer to be ruled by the US rather than the UN, but then it would seem that, despite repeated US assurances to the contrary, the Iraqi peoples' views on the matter don't figure in the equation. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, the OHRA would install the interim authority before handing over to a permanent Iraqi regime, with the UN's role limited to handing out food rations. To top it off, the Pentagon has made it clear that the interim authority will largely consist of an unsavoury bunch of Iraqi exiles such as Iraqi National Congress Leader Ahmed Chalabi. Theses exiles -- dubbed the "Rolex revolutionaries" in the State Department -- might have considerable support in the Pentagon but no one pretends they have any in Iraq itself. Over the last two weeks British government ministers have been claiming the situation was still "under discussion". But last weekend, while British officials were suggesting a US military administration would be 90 days, US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told US television it would probably be longer than six months. It left the unmistakable impression that, once again, the British government had been left out of the White House loop. Part of this confusion seems to be that the British government's main channel of communication with the Bush administration is Colin Powell's State Department. But, unfortunately for Tony Blair, Colin Powell is also a marginal figure in the White House's deliberations and can offer precious little assistance in advancing the British case. So it was no surprise -- except perhaps for the hapless Tony Blair -- to hear George Bush testily telling reporters in Belfast that a vital role for UN would include "food, medicine, aid, contributions" and "helping the interim government stand up until the real government shows up". "You know George Bush," one senior US official told The New York Times this week. "He knows how to sound deferential and then go home and pick up the plan exactly the way we set it six months ago." So it would seem. Not for the first time the president's commitments are not worth the videotape they were recorded on. But Tony Blair can do little but brace himself for the inevitable derision he will endure from his critics. When he met Bush in the Azores, he had real bargaining power -- after all, he looked like he would lose his job, which would have plunged the war plan into disarray. Having narrowly survived, however, the president knows that Blair now has no choice but to keep his colours nailed to the US imperial mast. Blair will no doubt feel compelled to try and sell this plan to the United Nations. But he's unlikely to get very far. France, Germany and Russia look as likely as ever to regard the OHRA as little more than a neo-colonial entity and will no doubt consider the proposed UN role as an insult. What Blair knows and the US appears so reluctant to accept, however, is that without UN approval the new Iraqi administration will have little chance of success. It will be an isolated regime, with no access to international aid and international organisations, such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. The irony of the UN withholding support is that it will make the Iraqi regime's absolute dependence on the United States inevitable. So Blair will be forced to adopt the now familiar role of apologist for US military ambition -- a charge that will dog him for as long as the new Iraqi regime exists. No doubt, at some point in the future, Tony Blair will look wistfully across the Channel at his former allies in Europe who bailed out of the American runaway train when they still had the chance. Now it is left to Blair to try and pull the brakes alone. A more thankless task in world politics is surely impossible to imagine.
