Palestinians accuse Blair of bias towards Israel

Tony Blair's future as Middle East peace envoy was in jeopardy after the Palestinian Authority said it was set to sever all contact with him because of his "bias" towards Israel, according to a press report published here on Thursday. The senior officials of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) are expected to meet in the coming days to discuss a proposal to declare Blair persona non grata, officials told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The Telegraph said PLO officials were predicting unanimous support for a motion intended to isolate the former prime minister to such an extent that his position would become untenable ''''We have been extremely unhappy and dissatisfied with Blair''s performance since he became envoy, but particularly in the past few weeks," a senior Palestinian official told the London-based daily. "There is no one within the Palestinian leadership that supports or likes or trusts Tony Blair, particularly because of the very damaging role he played during our UN bid," a second Palestinian official was quoted as saying. "He is considered persona non grata in Palestine. Although we can''t prevent him from coming here, we can hopefully minimise the role he can play because he is not a mediator, he is totally biased on one side." Blair has been viewed with an element of distrust by some Palestinians ever since his appointment as the envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East - the mediating body comprising the United States, the EU, the UN and Russia - on the day he left Downing Street in June 2007. But president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, has shown himself to be less amenable to American appeals than in the past. Considerably bolstering his once-flagging domestic popularity, he withstood a barrage of US anger in recent weeks to press ahead with his bid for statehood, despite threats in Washington to cut Palestinian aid. Palestinian anger towards Blair exploded into the open last week when Nabil Shaath, a senior negotiator, denounced him for peddling a US-backed peace plan that failed to call for a halt to Israeli settlement building. "He sounds like an Israeli diplomat sometimes," Shaath said. His major breakthrough has been persuading Israel to remove some of its West Bank checkpoints, the Telegraph pointed out. He is understood to have hoped to assume the more political role played by George Mitchell, President Obama''s special envoy, who resigned in May. If Palestinian claims are true, his efforts to persuade European powers not to back the statehood bid may have been an attempt to burnish his credentials in Washington.(