PM Off to Middle East for Palestine and Iraq Talks

Tony Blair will visit the Middle East this week to explore ways of dealing with the two apparently intractable problems in the region, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and the upsurge in violence in Iraq.

Downing Street, anxious about security in a part of the world that has become much more dangerous for US and British leaders since the invasion of Iraq last year, imposed a news blackout on the timetable.

Mr Blair is meeting various leaders before his Christmas holiday, which Arab diplomats say he will spend at a Middle East resort with his family. The prime minister has invested much of his political reputation in the Middle East and is keen for the British government to try to nudge the Israelis and Palestinians towards a resolution of their conflict. A senior Israeli official said yesterday that Mr Blair is to meet the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, for two hours of talks.

Mr Blair has been arguing since before the invasion of Iraq that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is necessary to win support for the west in the Muslim world.

But Zalman Shoval, one of Mr Sharon's advisers on foreign affairs, said Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian issue should not be lumped together. "The matter of Israeli-Palestinian peace is too serious to be turned into an implement to help something else. This is not a solution to other problems in the Middle East. Solutions to problems in Jerusalem and Baghdad are two separate routes," he said.

The US, with British backing, is determined that the Iraq election will go ahead as planned in spite of continuing violence that saw more than 60 people killed on Sunday, the second biggest death toll since the interim Iraqi government took control in the summer.

Both Mr Blair and President George Bush are trying to bolster the Iraqi leader, Ayad Allawi, in the face of insurgency led mainly by Sunni Muslims in the centre and north of Iraq. Mr Sharon last week agreed to support a conference Mr Blair is to host in London in February to discuss reform of the Palestinian Authority's economy, security services and government.

A senior Israeli official said yesterday that while Mr Sharon backed the conference, Israel will not send a representative.

"Israel will not participate in the conference because it is about Palestinian reform," he said. "We do not want to make it a political conference. We do not think it appropriate that Israel will participate. It is a technical conference."

Mr Blair would have liked a bigger conference that included both Palestinians and Israelis and would have opened negotiations on the main points of conflict. He is also to hold talks with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the favourite to succeed Yasser Arafat in an election in January.

Mr Blair is expected to lay a wreath at Mr Arafat's grave, a controversial decision given that many Israelis, as well as Jews in Britain, regard Mr Arafat as having been a terrorist responsible for many killings. The senior Israeli official, while hinting at per sonal distaste over the gesture, said that the wreath-laying ceremony was becoming a trend for visiting leaders and Israel would not interfere.

The British government, in private briefings, insists that it is not starry-eyed about the prospects of resolving either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the crisis in Iraq but that, at least with regards to the former, a combination of events offers the best opportunity in four years for making headway on the Israeli-Palestinian issue: the death of Mr Arafat and Mr Sharon's proposed pullout from Gaza this spring and summer.

Although the British government is helping the Palestinians rebuild their security services in the hope they will eventually crack down on Hamas and other militant groups that refuse to stop violence, the government acknowledges that the US is the key player and is hopeful Mr Bush will become more involved.

After the death of Mr Arafat, the British government recommended that European and other leaders visit Israel to put pressure on Mr Sharon. But while Mr Sharon will listen politely to Mr Blair, who is regarded as generally supportive of Israel, he will not want to be portrayed as bowing to international pressure.

Yossi Alpher, the editor of the Bitter Lemons website and a former member of Mossad, said: "Sharon will be compromised if he is seen to be bending to international pressure. Blair is under considerable pressure to show results but that's not Sharon's problem.

Rebels 'inciting civil war', page 11 David Hirst, page 16 guardian.co.uk/israel