Blair is Gaddafi family chum

7 June 2010
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has vigorously denied newspaper reports that he has become an adviser to the Libyan leader, Mu'ammar Gadaffi - specifically the Libyan Investment Commission - and that is his own business. However, it does not negate the fact that the man is ready to carry out many such tasks and that he earns large amounts of money for similar advisory posts, secured on the basis of relations with Arab governments consolidated during his term in office and his subsequent appointment as the Quartet's special envoy to the Middle East.

Sayf-al-Islam Gadaffi, son of the Libyan leader, claimed in an interview with the Daily Mail that Blair is his father's adviser and a personal friend of the family. He added that Blair visited Libya many times after he left his post, stayed in the family's residence, and played an advisory role for a Libyan government fund that runs the Libyan oil wealth, which is estimated at more than 94bn dollars.

Whom should we believe? Should we believe the denial by Mr Blair, who is accused of triggering a war that destroyed Iraq and killed and wounded millions of its people, or Sayf-al-Islam Gadaffi, who is a candidate to succeed his father in power? Sayf-al-Islam Gadaffi was the architect of the settlement of the Lockerbie achieved with help from the British Government led by Blair.

We believe the Libyan leader's son because we know very well that Blair is a professional liar. He misled the British people and parliament with his documented lies about weapons of mass destruction, which, he asserted, late Iraqi President Saddam Husayn had and was able to make ready in less than three quarters of an hour. We found out later that he knew that the Iraqi president had destroyed his weapons of mass destruction. Yet, he went to war against Iraq.

The former British prime minister loves money and earns huge amounts of it for consultations and lectures that he delivers for Arab governments, such as Kuwait. Legally, there is nothing wrong with that. However, we question this stand from a moral point of view and question the man's principles as Arabs who suffered from his policies and lies when he was at the helm of power.

Blair, as envoy for the Quartet and spiritual father of the economic peace in the West Bank, must also be held partly responsible for the current blockade of the Gaza Strip. He has done little to have this blockade lifted. Even his call for ending the blockade was coupled with obstructionist conditions, from the viewpoint of the Hamas Movement, such as recognizing the road map, renouncing violence (terrorism), accepting the agreements that have been signed between the PNA and Israel, and recognizing Israel's right to exist.

The most pressing question is not whether Blair receives money from Libya but how Mu'ammar Gadaffi - one of the staunchest supporters of the Palestinian cause and a vigorous opponent of the Iraq war - can possibly accept a person such as Blair to be either his friend or adviser.

Libya has itself been bombed and menaced and because of its support for the Arab nation's causes, particularly its support for the Palestinian resistance. We did not expect its leader to accept the friendship of someone who did to Iraq what former US President Ronald Reagan did to Libya when he ordered his bombers to attack it and attempted to assassinate the Libyan leader himself by destroying his house over his head and the heads of his family members.

We hope that war criminal Blair is not, in fact, a friend of the Libyan leader and his family. If he truly is, however, this friendship will cause great damage to the Libyan leader's national standing.