Blair to press US to back ceasefire resolution as Bush threatens Iran

Tony Blair will today press President George Bush to back "as a matter of urgency" a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a UN Security…

Tony Blair will today press President George Bush to back "as a matter of urgency" a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a UN Security Council resolution next week, according to Downing Street sources.

At a White House meeting, the prime minister will express his concern that pro-western Arab governments are "getting squeezed" by the crisis and the longer it continues, the more squeezed they will be, giving militants a boost. The private view at No 10 is that the Bush administration is "prevaricating" over the resolution and allowing the conflict to run on too long.

But Mr Bush does not seem to be in any hurry to resolve the crisis and last night upped the ante by appearing to threaten Iran. "Hizbullah attacked Israel. I know Hizbullah is connected to Iran," Mr Bush said. "Now is the time for the world to confront this danger."

Mr Blair wants to demonstrate that he has influence in the White House and that Britain has a policy independent of the US. Polls this week indicated public disquiet over his closeness to Mr Bush and the failure to act more decisively to end the bloodshed.

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The US and Britain have stood against most of the rest of the world in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire. Mr Blair has held his position on that but he will press for the US to move faster by backing the resolution.

In the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Mr Blair pushed the US to support a UN security council resolution but in the end US support was half-hearted and the resolution failed to materialise. Since the present Middle East conflict began on July 12th, the US has prevented any resolution in the security council.

With an eye on the Arab world, Mr Blair wants to ensure that Hizbullah and like-minded militant groups such as Hamas in Palestine do not emerge stronger from the crisis. He will reiterate to Mr Bush that the key to resolving the violence is a resolution of the Palestinian issue.

No 10 dismissed the dispute over US military flights using Prestwick airport in Scotland to transport weapons to Israel without telling Britain as an issue of process, not principle, which will not overshadow the talks.

France, which holds the presidency of the security council, has drafted the outline of a UN resolution which it wants to push to a vote early next week. Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, said: "If we don't stop things now, an absolutely hellish spiral will be unleashed. It would not just be between Israel and Hizbullah but also increasingly between Israel and Arab countries, and increasingly between the West and the Muslim world." - (Guardian service)

• The Government has said no freight aircraft carrying US munitions have landed at any Irish airport in the last month, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, following the disclosure that arms were secretly shipped through a Scottish airport.

But more than 250 passenger aircraft carrying US troops to and from Iraq, along with their personal weapons, have been given permission to use Shannon over the same period, the Department of Transport said last night.

Under Irish law, foreign authorities are required to notify the department if they are carrying munitions on civilian aircraft into Irish airspace, while the Department of Foreign Affairs must be told if a foreign country is using an official aircraft to carry supplies.

A cargo aircraft landed in Shannon in February carrying three Boeing Apache helicopters.

Initially, both the Department of Transport and the Department of Foreign Affairs denied any knowledge of the flight, but they later accepted that the aircraft had used the airport.

Fianna Fáil TD Michael Woods later told the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs that the aircraft had originally intended to land in Iceland, but plans were changed at the last minute because of a technical fault.