Tony Blair accused of conflict of interests in Middle East

Critics unite to demand his sacking as Quartet's envoy as evidence emerges of his private business interests expanding in region

Iraq's latest bloody crisis and its links to the 2003 war brought Tony Blair back into the headlines this week, along with calls for him to step down as a Middle East peace envoy – but new evidence has emerged that his private business interests in the ever-volatile region are expanding.

Aides to the former prime minister confirmed that he was actively considering opening an office in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, which is in the frontline of the struggle against political Islam. But a spokesperson denied suggestions by a leading Arab economist that he was being considered for a job advising Oman on its long-term development, after his controversial £27m consultancy project for the Kuwaiti government in recent years.

Retired diplomats and political enemies united to demand Blair be sacked as the envoy of the Quartet – the UN, US, Russia and EU – after achieving little to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace in seven years.

Blair's Middle Eastern activities cause some irritation in Whitehall, where officials say they are not always aware of what he is doing and exactly who he is representing in meetings abroad – even though he is routinely briefed by British embassies. "He moves in mysterious ways," quipped one senior figure.

"The Blair organisation is like a sort of government with different departments doing different things," an ex-employee said. "His office is run on Downing Street lines. It's like he's never not been PM."

Aides said the Abu Dhabi office would be used for managing projects in Kazakhstan and Romania. But it will give him a presence at the heart of a strategic region. The former prime minister is close to the Abu Dhabi crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is often described as being obsessed by Islamists and has lobbied hard for a tough UK line against the Muslim Brotherhood. Blair already has a contract to advise Mubadala, one of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds.

Rumours are circulating in London and Cairo of plans by Blair to advise the Egyptian government under President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, the former field marshal who overthrew the democratically elected but unpopular Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, a year ago.


Blair has visited Cairo twice this year in his Quartet role. Alastair Campbell, his former communications chief, has also visited, and confirmed that he met "officials and politicians" to discuss "perceptions in the international media about Egypt in respect of concerns that are obvious".

Morsi's removal was followed by the killings of more than 1,000 Brotherhood supporters, mass death sentences and other human rights abuses as well as the widely condemned imprisonment of three al-Jazeera journalists after an often farcical and chaotic trial this week.

Middle Eastern sources said it was likely any work by Blair on Egypt would be done on behalf of the UAE, which with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, in backing Sisi financially and politically. "It's pretty basic fact-gathering in support of a broader project helping the Egyptians," said one consultant.

Blair's spokesperson said: "Neither Mr Blair nor his organisations are making any money out of Egypt and there is no desire to do that."

Blair has, however, recently commissioned his own"briefing document" on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in parallel with a controversial wider review for David Cameron by Britain's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir John Jenkins. Aides said it was for Blair's sole use. It was not linked to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which researches Middle Eastern and other issues.

The UAE is running an energetic campaign highlighting the activities of the Brotherhood, using London-based advisers to bolster their demand that its activists should not be allowed to operate in the UK. "We hope that our friends will not help our enemies," one Emirati official said. The Brotherhood insists it is a peaceful organisation that abides by UK law.

Cameron spoke to Bin Zayed about Iraq, Syria and Libya this week – a reminder of close relations with a key political and commercial partner. Britain's trade with the UAE is expected to reach £12.5bn by 2015. UAE investments in the UK amounted to £40bn by the end of 2012.

In another link between Abu Dhabi and London, Bin Zayed is advised by a low-profile former British soldier called Will Tricks, who "raised a lot of eyebrows" in Whitehall, according to ex-colleagues, when he left his MI6 posting in the UAE to work for the crown prince.

His comments on the Muslim Brotherhood and support for Sisi are stronger than anything said publicly by the UK government.

"Blair is a paid employee of Abu Dhabi because of his Mubadala contract," said Christopher Davidson, a Gulf expert at Durham University. "He should not be regarded as representing UK national interests."

Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said: "Tony Blair has to decide between his Quartet role as envoy to one of the most dangerous conflicts on the planet, his burgeoning media role in pushing for intervention in Iraq and Syria and his business interests across the globe including in the Middle East. These roles are incompatible and create a huge conflict of interest."

Blair's views on political Islam are no secret. "He's always taken a fairly strong view about not tolerating Islamic extremism and gets fed up with moderates for not acting, but he has become more right-wing on this," said a former diplomat. "The problem in Iraq was that he conflated extremism with Saddam Hussein."

Even some who admit that they share Blair's view of the Brotherhood as an extremist organisation say that does not mean endorsing repressive methods to crush it, as have been used in Egypt, where it has been proscribed.

Talk of his possible role in advising Sisi has provoked speculation and criticism. "He clearly is very experienced and has a tremendous amount of contacts – so he can provide support to any vision that Egypt might like to adopt," said Samir Radwan, a former Egyptian finance minster. "But Tony Blair sometimes waffles. If he can abandon that, he can be effective. But whether his agenda will allow him to find a way out of the tension between the Muslim Brotherhood and the government, I don't know. That would be problematic – but it doesn't make it impossible.

"Sisi himself left the door open to inclusion … what the situation needs is a catalyst. Can Tony Blair play that role? If he stops waffling, maybe. The caveat to all that is that Blair's credibility is very low in Egypt. If the Egyptian government comes out and says that Mr Blair has advised us, it would not sit well in the street because of what he did in Iraq."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/27/tony-blair-conflict-interests-middle-east

Someone shoot the bugger!

Absolutely disgusting with what is going on in Egypt.

Hundreds of “disappeared” Egyptians are being tortured and held outside of judicial oversight in a secret military prison, according to Guardian interviews with former inmates, lawyers, rights activists and families of missing persons.

Since at least the end of July 2013, detainees have been taken there blindfolded and forcibly disappeared. Up to 400 are still being tortured and held outside of judicial oversight in the clearest example of a wide-scale crackdown that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have jointly called “repression on a scale unprecedented in Egypt’s modern history”.

Prisoners at Azouli are routinely electrocuted, beaten and hanged naked by their tied wrists for hours until they either give up specific information, memorise confessions or until – in the case of a small group of released former inmates – are deemed of no further use to their interrogators.



http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/disappeared-egyptians-torture-secret-military-prison

That's life under the Egyptian military.

But you poor left wingers love Blair.After all,he's your messiah.

He IS left wingism.So why are you pretending to moan about him when in fact you idolise him?

Blair was never left wing.   I loath the man and always have, and he wears make up.

And do you really want me to go back through and find the posts where we were discussing him and you agreed with me?

Sassy wrote:Blair was never left wing.   I loath the man and always have, and he wears make up.

And do you really want me to go back through and find the posts where we were discussing him and you agreed with me?

I can recall you saying ages ago how you loathed Tony Blair Sassy and I think either partly or mostly for the invasion of Iraq.

Joy Division wrote:

Sassy wrote:Blair was never left wing.   I loath the man and always have, and he wears make up.

And do you really want me to go back through and find the posts where we were discussing him and you agreed with me?

I can recall you saying ages ago how you loathed Tony Blair Sassy and I think either partly or mostly for the invasion of Iraq.

Yep, he and Bush planned it (I'm convinced before 9/11) and the havoc they caused and the millions of deaths they caused is ongoing. Used to be called the 'Domino Effect' for a different area.

Sassy wrote:

Joy Division wrote:


I can recall you saying ages ago how you loathed Tony Blair Sassy and I think either partly or mostly for the invasion of Iraq.

Yep, he and Bush planned it (I'm convinced before 9/11) and the havoc they caused and the millions of deaths they caused is ongoing.   Used to be called the 'Domino Effect' for a different area.

...yeah, although it's something we have a difference of opinion on Sass...I definitely recall you say you really disliked Blair quite a long time ago.

The planning started when the price of oil began to soar.

Lies were used to cover up the truth.

And me for on was hoodwinked.......

And now ....................The whole region is a far worst place for the residents unless they are Islamic fundamentalists.

Joy Division wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Yep, he and Bush planned it (I'm convinced before 9/11) and the havoc they caused and the millions of deaths they caused is ongoing.   Used to be called the 'Domino Effect' for a different area.

...yeah, although it's something we have a difference of opinion on Sass...I definitely recall you say  you really disliked Blair quite a long time ago.

It was Iraq that really made me dislike him and when I met him about a year after it, he really was the slimiest creep. Ugh!

gerber wrote:The planning started when the price of oil began to soar.

Lies were used to cover up the truth.

And me for on was hoodwinked.......

And now ....................The whole region is a far worst place for the residents unless they are Islamic fundamentalists.

Spot on Gerbs!

No it all started when two people misled both nations on going to war based on lies, if it was about oil, how exactly has either nation benefited from Oil?
America is now near producing the same levels of oil as Iraq, it sits on a bigger reserve than the whole Middle East and thus has bugger all to do with oil, it never has because neither nation has made any benefits from it, in fact all we have seen is increases.
It was all about taking down Saddam.

Didge they wanted to have control over the oil.

Kuwait ..........

gerber wrote:Didge they wanted to have control over the oil.

Kuwait ..........

Is that why China now controls half of it sold to them?

From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil
An in-depth look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the events leading up to them, and the players who made them possible.

February 4, 2007 |


In the Caspian Basin and beneath the deserts of Iraq, as many as 783 billion barrels of oil are waiting to be pumped. Anyone controlling that much oil stands a good chance of breaking OPEC's stranglehold overnight, and any nation seeking to dominate the world would have to go after it.

The long-held suspicions about George Bush's wars are well-placed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They were not waged to spread democracy in the Middle East or enhance security at home. They were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and they were undertaken to control petroleum resources.

The "global war on terror" began as a fraud and a smokescreen and remains so today, a product of the Bush Administration's deliberate and successful distortion of public perception. The fragmented accounts in the mainstream media reflect this warping of reality, but another more accurate version of recent history is available in contemporary books and the vast information pool of the Internet. When told start to finish, the story becomes clear, the dots easier to connect.

Both appalling and masterful, the lies that led us into war and keep us there today show the people of the Bush Administration to be devious, dangerous and far from stupid.

The following is an in-depth look at the oil wars, the events leading up to them, and the players who made them possible.

Iraq

The Project for a New American Century, a D.C.-based political think tank funded by archconservative philanthropies and founded in 1997, is the source of the Bush Administration's imperialistic urge for the U.S. to dominate the world. Our nation should seek to achieve a "...benevolent global hegemony," according to William Kristol, PNAC's chairman. The group advocates the novel and startling concept of "pre-emptive war" as a means of doing so.

On January 26, 1998, the PNAC, sent a letter to President William Clinton urging the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The dictator, the letter alleged, was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and posed a mortal threat to "...the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's oil supply..." The subjugation of Iraq would be the first application of "pre-emptive war."

The unprovoked, full-scale invasion and occupation of another country, however, would be an unequivocal example of "the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of another state." That is the formal United Nations definition of military aggression, and a nation can choose to launch it only in self-defense. Otherwise it is an international crime.

President Clinton did not honor the PNAC's request.

But sixteen members of the Project for a New American Century would soon assume prominent positions in the Administration of George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage and John Bolton.

The "significant portion of the world's oil supply" was of immediate concern, because of the commanding influence of the oil industry in the Bush Administration. Beside the president and vice president, eight cabinet secretaries and the national security advisor had direct ties to the industry, and so did 32 others in the departments of Defense, State, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and the Office of Management and Budget.

Within days of taking office, President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to chair a National Energy Policy Development Group. Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was composed of the relevant federal officials and dozens of energy industry executives and lobbyists, and it operated in tight secrecy. (The full membership has never been revealed, but Enron's Kenneth Lay is known to have participated, and the Washington Post reported that Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell, and BP America did, too.)

During his second week in office, President Bush convened the first meeting of his National Security Council. It was a triumph for the PNAC. In just one hour-long meeting, the new Bush Administration turned upside down the long-standing focus of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Over Secretary of State Colin Powell's objections, the goal of reconciling the Israel-Palestine conflict was abandoned, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was set as the new priority. Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty , describes the meeting in detail.

http://www.alternet.org/story/47489/from_afghanistan_to_iraq%3A_connecting_the_dots_with_oil

Only c&p'd this because I have read the book and My Lord, it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Yes a conspiracy theory, Again America is producing more oil than ever before and is reliant less and less on oil from the Middle east proving such conspiracy theories are a load of babble

Show how much oil the US imports from Iraq today, compared to how much it was importing in the last 2 decades before the invasion?

Show how Britain has benefited also?

Whatever Me Lord, you're the only one that know anything Me Lord, always do Me Lord. Bye.

Sassy wrote:Whatever Me Lord, you're the only one that know anything Me Lord, always do Me Lord.   Bye.

So once you have no answer, the digs start as per usual, best you move aside and let others debate if you do not know.

Thanks

No, once you ignore facts, refuse to read the facts and follow with your normal 'I know best' crap, posting anything becomes useless. So do carry on telling us how you are the only one who knows anything, and all the FACTS above are not FACTS but a conspiracy theory. You don't debate, the only person you listen to is yourself, so do carry on.

Sassy wrote:No, once you ignore facts, refuse to read the facts and follow with your normal 'I know best' crap, posting anything becomes useless.   So do carry on telling us how you are the only one who knows anything, and all the FACTS above are not FACTS but a conspiracy theory.   You don't debate, the only person you listen to is yourself, so do carry on.

So more childish digs

What facts?

The illegal war was started due to a false claim Saddam was behind terrorism and a key component holding also training camps for terrorism, with the false threat of WMD. In fact as seen the war actually created far more terrorism, hence the failings of this conflict.  America has now reached a point where 65% of its oil is produced by itself, year on year increasing, if this was about oil, then why do they import or control so little of it, where in fact China has the monopoly of 50% near enough
Iraq oil represents around 5% of its imports


http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm


So explain to me how this has benefited them in anyway where again their oil production has made them less and less reliant on Middle East Oil?