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The broadcast chat "reinforces the damaging public image of Blair as the US president's poodle," Daily Mirror said. (Reuters)
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CAIRO — British Prime Minister Tony Blair was roundly mocked by British media on Tuesday, July 18, as a US poodle after an off-the-cuff chat with President George W. Bush over a G8 lunch was accidentally broadcast.
"Yo, Bush! Start treating our prime minister with respect," wrote the popular tabloid Daily Mirror.
The Iraq war duo enjoyed a gossip over lunch at the G8 summit in Russia on Monday, July 17, unaware that a microphone in front of them was switched on and their words would be relayed around the world.
Breaking with diplomatic formalities, Bush hailed Blair, his closest ally, with the words "Yo, Blair."
His solution to the Middle East crisis was that Syria should press Hizbullah to "stop doing this s**t."
Israel has over the past week killed more than 227 Lebanese, all but 14 of them civilians, and inflicted the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for two decades, with attacks targeting ports, roads, bridges, factories and petrol stations.
Hizbullah responded by attacking a naval vessel off Beirut and firing hundreds of rockets at northern Israel, killing 24 people, 12 of them civilians.
Poodle
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| The Independent front paged the plunder. |
The British media pored over the text of the conversation, saying it cast Blair in a subservient role and showed the unequal nature of Britain's much-vaunted "special relationship" with the US.
The broadcast chat "reinforces the damaging public image of Blair as the US president's poodle," Daily Mirror said.
The most damaging to Blair was what commentators saw as a plea -- rebuffed by Bush -- to be allowed to visit the Middle East to try to stop fighting between Israel and Hizbullah.
The prime minister suggested he could prepare the ground for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, because "if she goes out, she's got to succeed ... whereas I can just go out and talk."
The Guardian said Blair "all but offers to carry her (Rice's) bags."
"He sounds less like the head of a sovereign government than a Bush official, waiting for the boss's green light -- which he does not give," said the daily.
The Independent echoed almost the same message, running the full transcript of the conversation.
Commenting on Blair's plea part it wrote: "Meaning: 'Please, George, let me go to the Middle East and be a world statesman'".
After the plea was buffed by Bush, the daily said Blair's response was nothing more than: "'Oh well, all right, if you don't want me to. Just a thought.'"
Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University, said the conversation suggested "that perhaps Blair doesn't have the kind of relationship with Bush that he would sometimes like to claim he has."
Blair has been Bush's most trusted ally, putting his political future on the line by backing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 despite rows with European allies and fierce political attacks at home.
Grant, however, said the conversation only reflected reality.
"The U.S.-UK relationship throughout the whole period since World War Two has always been an asymmetrical one. It's always been one in which the U.S. has been dominant."
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