On Eve of U.S. Visit, Blair Lauds Clinton

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is coming to Washington bearing support for President Clinton, a call to order--”Politics shouldn’t be run at the level of a gossip column”--and blunt warnings to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“I’m proud to call Bill Clinton a friend,” Blair told American correspondents here Monday. “What is important is that he and other world leaders don’t get deflected . . . from dealing with the big-picture issues. That’s precisely what he’s doing. . . . That’s what the people who elected us expect us to do.”

A social reformer with a powerful mandate, Blair arrives Wednesday for a four-day state visit, his first as leader of the United States’ closest ally. Iraq and Northern Ireland head the summit agenda, but Blair will have ample chance to combine friendship and statesmanship.

He chose his words with obvious thought and great care in answering reporters’ questions about Clinton’s troubles--a sex scandal and intimations that he may have lied about it and encouraged others to do so.

High popularity ratings for Clinton should not be surprising, Blair said. “I think that the public in the end is more canny than sometimes the media gives them credit for,” said Blair, listing matters ranging from Iraq to the State of the Union address on which Clinton has focused despite the recent uproar. “He’s absolutely right to do it, because that’s what the people who elected us expect us to do.”

The Blairs and the Clintons, four lawyers including two leaders with similar policies, cemented their bond on a presidential visit here last year. Blair’s Washington red carpet will include a 19-gun salute, a state banquet, a joint news conference and a microphone at Clinton’s Saturday radio show.

Blair, 44, and his wife, Cherie, will stay at Blair House, no relation, as well as one night at Camp David.

British reporters in Washington portray the visit as a calculated “love-in” to bolster Clinton. “Blair remains a glamorous international newcomer in American eyes, and the White House is doing everything possible to exploit the personal and political empathy between the two leaders,” said Martin Kettle in the Guardian.

Meeting the American reporters in the Cabinet room at 10 Downing St., Blair pledged unreserved support for Clinton’s stand against Iraq. “I have no doubt at all that we will be ready to act when we need to act,” he said.

Britain, which has an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and dispatched six more Harrier vertical-takeoff jet fighters Monday to reinforce it, will support airstrikes against Iraq, Blair made plain without saying so directly. “Saddam must be made to comply with the U.N. resolutions,” said Blair, citing weapons of mass destruction discovered by now-stymied international inspectors in Iraq.

Among U.S. allies, Britain has been outspoken in its willingness to back military action in the Gulf. “Sometimes diplomacy fails,” Blair said, “but one thing that is absolutely sure is that diplomacy, unless it is backed by the threat of force, is certain to fail. I hope it is very plain to Saddam that we are not bluffing, we are deadly serious.”

On Northern Ireland, Blair noted that British and U.S. policies also concur on the search for peace there, one of Blair’s key domestic initiatives.

“I would pay tribute to the tremendous support I have had from the American president. . . . He has been absolutely solid as a rock,” Blair said. Discord continues within Northern Ireland, but the outline for an eventual agreement exists, the British leader said, hailing “very, very important” U.S. support for Anglo-Irish attempts to win a peace settlement.

He spoke on the record for more than 45 minutes, at ease under a portrait of Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, in the long room facing Downing Street’s back garden.

Blair, who dragged a traditional, labor-based party away from socialism to conquer the political center and end 18 years of Conservative Party rule, has been the toast of Europe since his landslide victory May 1.

One of the hats he will wear in Washington is as president for the first half of this year of the European Union. “I do see Britain as a bridge between the U.S. and Europe,” he said.

The United States’ strong leadership role is as important as ever, Blair said, citing the U.S. contribution to peace-seeking in Bosnia-Herzegovina. To Americans, Bosnia may seem distant, he said, but “if we had let that civil war explode and spread, we would have had a real problem. . . . What today’s world teaches us is that none of the big powers can be immunized or insulated from those situations.”

Blair says his Labor Party speaks for the “radical center” in a nation long proud of a now-failing welfare state. Backed by an unstoppable parliamentary majority, he has launched reforms on backbone issues such as welfare, health and education.

At the head of a party that came to power attacking its opponents’ “sleaze,” Blair is squeaky clean.

The prime minister, whose foreign minister has come under media attack after leaving his wife for his secretary, said it is fatal for a leader to allow himself to be distracted from central issues by tangential matters.

“These other things come along and collide with the business of government from time to time, but you don’t end up in the position that you are distracted. . . . Politics shouldn’t be run at the level of a gossip column.”