Blair's big problem

Tony Blair flies to Washington tomorrow for what he must have thought when he booked the jet would be one of the peaks of his premiership. An adrenaline high and a political high; an event for the memoirs and for the history books. It is a rare honour to be invited to address a special joint session of the American Congress.

When he inhales the inevitable standing ovation, Mr Blair will join a prestigious pantheon which includes only three previous British prime ministers: Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. The first two were granted the privilege because of the Anglo-American alliance in the Second World War; Mrs Thatcher was rewarded for being such an iron warrior alongside Ronald Reagan during the Cold War.

War is again the reason that Tony Blair has been elevated to this exclusive club, but his membership will be viewed much more ambiguously. The spectacle of Tony Blair sucking up applause in Washington for being such an unswerving ally in the toppling of Saddam Hussein is likely to feed the suspicions here about whether he joined George Bush's invasion on a false basis.

The more he is adored in the United States, the more he will be loathed by some of his own people, particularly by people in the Labour Party.

Tony Blair will have to live with that. What has turned his trip into a really nightmarish minefield is the mutual recrimination which is suppurating between the two allies themselves.

DIVISIONS between the British Government and the American administration, largely masked when George Bush and Tony Blair were locked together during the conflict, are becoming increasingly evident. The countries' intelligence agencies, traditionally the closest in the world, are grappling in a bitter dispute about the reliability of the claims about the Iraqi arsenal, a blame game which is also being played out between the politicians.

The American administration, never exactly sensitive to the needs of its allies, even an ally as faithful as Tony Blair, has been casually damaging to the British Prime Minister.

What a red carpet they have rolled out across the Atlantic Mr Blair. Days before his visit, the White House announces the selection of six prisoners held at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay for trial and - not hearing the disquiet of the British Government or not caring enough to respond to it - two of those designated for the military dock are British citizens.

War in Afghanistan was conducted - in Mr Bush's oft repeated phrase - to "bring justice" to those responsible for terrorism. The government of the Land of the Free appears to have forgotten that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

Even if you thought that justice can be done by Pentagonappointed military tribunals meeting in secret, it certainly won't be seen to be done in either the court of world opinion or by British political opinion.

British ministers are wearily resigned to the fact that the United States doesn't seem to care how this will look to the rest of the planet. They might, though, have expected a bit more appreciation of the vast embarrassment it threatens to bring down on the head of the Prime Minister.

More than 200 MPs have already signed a motion condemning trial by military tribunal. Opinion across the spectrum - Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory - is outraged by the idea that the two Britons should face possible execution by the American military, denying to British citizens the civil trial given to John Walker Lindh, the American captured in Afghanistan.

Guantanamo is but one example of how the Atlantic is getting wider just as Mr Blair prepares to fly across it. When he is under the most intense domestic pressure to defend his claims about Saddam's weapons, the US Defence Secretary, the incorrigible Donald Rumsfeld, pulls the rug from under the Prime Minister by saying that there never was any good evidence that the threat from the Iraqi dictator had increased. The Americans then declare that the claim that Iraq had tried to buy urafornium from Africa was based on flaky intelligence supplied by the British.

Well, gee, thanks folks. Already suffering from British backlash about the war, the Prime Minister is now getting caught in American blowback. George Bush is under increasingly intense attack from the newly emboldened Democrats about how the war was sold to the United States.

That's not a buck that the American President wants to stop on his desk. He will put his political future before that of anyone else, including the British Prime Minister.

Once the White House's stand-up guy, now Mr Blair looks as if he is being used as their fall-guy.

Perhaps that is not the intention. The more benign interpretation is that the Bush administration simply does not appreciate the harm inflicted on Mr Blair, though that is hardly the way to treat a supposedly valued ally to whom it is vitally important to demonstrate that the " special relationship" is not a oneway street.

ON this side of the Atlantic, there is a clamour for the Prime Minister to stand up to President Bush - about Guantanamo, about internationalising the occupation of Iraq - to prove that he is not a spavined poodle. Over there, the neo-conservatives around George Bush say: enough already.

In their view, this "socialist" Brit has been far too influential over the American President. The Prime Minister cajoled him down the UN route to war, a road which proved to be a cul-de-sac.

It was more Mr Blair than it was Mr Bush who decided to sell the war on the basis that Saddam Hussein was a clear and present danger, to the subsequent and enduring discomfort of both leaders unless weapons of mass destruction are found.

This is the precarious paradox of Tony Blair's position. Influential elements of the American administration think the blame for their problems lies with Bush giving way too much to Blair; a large chunk of British public opinion is infuriated because it believes Blair has given far too much to Bush.

It is, in more than one sense of the phrase, fall-out time.