Top Blair Aide: We Must Talk to Al-qaida

Western governments must talk to terror groups including al-Qaida and the Taliban if they hope to secure a long-term halt to their campaigns of violence, according to the man who for more than a decade was Tony Blair's most influential aide and adviser.

Jonathan Powell, who served as Blair's chief of staff from 1995 to 2007 and is widely regarded as having been instrumental in negotiating a settlement in Northern Ireland, said his experience in the province convinced him that it was essential to keep a line of communication open even with one's bitterest enemies.

Powell said: "There's nothing to say to al-Qaida and they've got nothing to say to us at the moment but at some stage you're going to have to come to a political solution as well as a security solution. And that means you need the ability to talk."

In his first major interview, ahead of the publication of his book on the behind the scenes drama leading to the Northern Ireland peace deal, Powell also delivered a remarkably candid assessment of the Blair years, revealing that:

· He did not think labor had governed boldly enough because it feared losing power.

· Blair had a tendency to change his mind about things and could be "a bit of a flipperty gibbet".

· Blair had failed in 10 years of government to sell Europe to the British.

· Relations between the Blair and Brown camps were so toxic that Gordon Brown did not talk to him for 10 years.

Powell, the most senior member of the Blair circle to survive the prime minister's full term in office, said he realized after reviewing government papers and his diaries that a secret back channel between the British government and the IRA, first opened in the 1970s, was one of the key factors that contributed to a peace deal three decades later.

"It's very difficult for democratic governments to do - talk to a terrorist movement that's killing your people," he said. "[But] if I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban and I would want to find a channel to al-Qaida."

Powell's remarks will be highly controversial as all western governments have insisted any contact with al-Qaida would be pointless. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said last night: "It is inconceivable that HMG would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organization like al-Qaida."

The government's position on the Taliban and Hamas has been more nuanced: it did communicate with the Palestinian group for a period through an MI6 officer but now insists Hamas must recognize Israel and end violence before talks can resume. In December Brown ruled out talking to the Taliban leadership but said he would "support [Afghanistan's] President Karzai in his efforts at reconciliation".

Powell, whose book, Great Hatred, Little Room, will be serialized exclusively in the Guardian from Monday, conceded that the idea of talking to al-Qaida and the Taliban was fraught with practical problems: "Who do you talk to? And what do you actually have to talk about?"

Though Powell insisted he was proud of the government's achievements, he said ministers had been slow to act in many areas because "we were mesmerized by the notion that we'd be another labor government that came in, a flash in the pan, and then disappeared again ... And so the huge emphasis was on not spending all our political capital, hoarding it and saving it to win another election and stay in power".

He said Labor's first term in office had also been hampered by the poor caliber of many ministers including the health secretary Frank Dobson, who he described as "a disaster", and the environment minister Michael Meacher.

Although he said he believed Blair had increased Britain's influence in Europe, one of his biggest regrets was that the government had failed to sell Europe at home. "We didn't manage to change British attitudes about Europe ... Tony made lots of speeches but we never could do that." Powell also offered a remarkable insight into the intensity of the years-long Blair-Brown feud, revealing that the former chancellor had walked past him weekly for more than 10 years without ever saying hello. Periodically, he said, he could hear the two men yelling at each other through the door of the prime minister's office.

Though he said he regarded Blair as a "remarkable, visionary leader" who would go down as one of the greatest British prime ministers, he conceded that he found some of his personality traits irritating, in particular his habit of "not sticking to things once you'd decided them".

He said: "I take a very strong view, once you've decided to do something you should really stick to it and see it through and he would sometimes be a bit of a flipperty gibbet about things and change his mind."