British prime minister Tony Blair battled to quell the Labour Party revolt over his Lebanon policy yesterday by saying he had not given a green light to Israel's military operations, and insisting he was only interested in securing a long-term settlement that must encompass a Palestinian state.
Mr Blair also suggested he would personally lead a drive to re-energise the peace process in September, claiming he would regard it as a personal failure of his leadership if he could not help negotiate a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
Mr Blair's hour-long exposition of his policy at a Downing Street press conference came after a cabinet and backbench revolt in the wake of the conflict in Lebanon and his own five-day absence in California.
His remarks did not satisfy his most vocal critics, but cabinet members denied any co-ordinated revolt was being organised.
"It is not surprising to me that there are people who profoundly disagree with the policy," Mr Blair said. "Or that there is anxiety amongst members of the cabinet; members of the parliamentary Labour party; people in the country. This is a very difficult situation."
In a further effort to shore up his position, he gave his strongest criticism of Israel's bombing campaign, describing it as "unacceptable", but he refused to describe it as disproportionate.
Responding to Labour backbench demands for an unconditional ceasefire, he said: "I have got to try and get a solution to this, and the solution will not come by condemning one side, it will not come simply by statements that we make, it will only come by a plan that allows a ceasefire on both sides and then a plan to deal with the underlying cause, which is the inability of the government of Lebanon to take control of the whole of Lebanon."
Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former ambassador to Moscow and former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that he had done more damage to UK interests in the Middle East than Sir Anthony Eden, who led Britain into the Suez crisis, and called on him to resign immediately.
Writing in the Financial Times, he derided Mr Blair as a "frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud's" programmed by the CIA to "spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent".
"Stiff in his opinions, but often in the wrong, he has manipulated public opinion, sent our soldiers into distant lands for ill-conceived purposes, misused the intelligence agencies to serve his ends, and reduced the foreign office to a demoralised cipher because it keeps reminding him of inconvenient facts," he wrote.
"He keeps the dog, but he barely notices if it barks or not. He prefers to construct his 'foreign policy' out of self-righteous soundbites and expensive foreign travel.
"Mr Blair's total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?" - (Guardian service; additional reporting: PA)