Rifkind attacks Blair's trip

Tory support for Tony Blair's handling of the campaign against terrorism was heavily dented today when former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind attacked the Prime Minister's latest diplomatic mission as "very unwise".

Sir Malcolm, in the strongest attack by any senior Conservative so far, condemned the Prime Minister for laying himself open to public humiliation at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

He said Mr Blair should not have allowed himself to be lured into a press conference alongside the president, which allowed Mr Assad to hail the terror groups he sheltered as "freedom fighters" and condemn the air attacks on Afghanistan.

"He has not only embarrassed himself but he has also made life difficult for moderate Arab leaders like President Mubarak of Egypt," Sir Malcolm said, arguing that they would now be under greater pressure from Muslims in their own countries to follow Mr Assad's example. "To be brutal about it, no one in the Middle East is terribly interested in what Britain or France says on these matters. It is the US that calls the shots." Sir Malcolm is no longer an MP but he remains a senior and active member of the party, and pressure will now be put on Iain Duncan Smith and other serving Tories to say whether they agree with his criticism.

Mr Duncan Smith has, until now, shown almost total support for Mr Blair's handling of the crisis. The Opposition leader's only public criticism, made in The Daily Telegraph earlier this week, was to say that the Prime Minister had failed sufficiently to persuade public opinion at home of the rightness of his cause. That was enough to trigger alarm in the upper ranks of the Government. A wider rift would be a far more serious setback for Mr Blair.

The Prime Minister is set to resume his diplomatic efforts next week when he flies to Washington for a brief meeting with President Bush. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw today denied that this week's trip to the Middle East had not been a success, arguing that the mission had helped "very, very significantly" towards a peace process in the region.

He added: "The value of the trip is not what was said during the press conference [with President Assad], it has to be what was said in private - and that obviously has to remain private." Mr Straw likened the criticism he has faced for making the three-day trip to five different countries to the criticism Mr Blair faced during the difficult days over Northern Ireland.

"What we know is that if there is a delegation, there is a better chance of a reduction of violence in the longer term than if [there is] not."

Sir Malcolm said: "This is not the moment for a British Prime Minister to go trying to make independent initiatives in the Middle East."

Labour MPs opposed to the bombing of Afghanistan forced a symbolic Commons vote over the campaign. The rebels, frustrated that the Commons has yet to be given the opportunity formally to record its attitude to the military campaign, were defeated by the Government 373 to 13 - a Government majority of 360 - last night.