Bush leaves Blair empty handed [View All]

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Analysts were hard pressed to see how Blair's staunch support of Bush's unpopular war in Iraq had gained the British PM any political capital at all.

The president flew out of the UK on Friday afternoon after a highly choreographed day of leisure in Blair's northern constituency.

"I can't see what Blair has got," Lord William Wallace, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, told AFP.
He pointed at Bush's failure to budge on such tough issues as the fate of nine Britons held with some 640 other prisoners at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, or the looming EU-US trade war over Bush's tariffs on imported steel.

"Bush does not appear to be aware that he needs to give Blair some evident concessions in order to make Blair's position more defensible within Britain," said Wallace, who is also the opposition Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2A9B0582-BA96-495B-B860-553CB8165D00.htm