Tony Blair wanted 'Russian patriot' Vladimir Putin to sit at international 'top table' 📁Documents reveal how Britain led the way in trying to persuade Vladimir Putin to ‘reach for Western attitudes’ 🔴 cahalmilmo
Nonetheless, the documents repeatedly make clear the desire for some sort of strategic rapprochement with Moscow in western capitals, with Putin viewed as being open to persuasion on a variety of sticking points after he expressed support for the West’s tough line on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and vowed to halt Russian supplies used by Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
During a meeting between Blair and Bush’s vice-president Dick Cheney, the then prime minister went out of his way to suggest the West needed to promote the “St Petersburg” – that is, European – aspects of Putin’s thinking.
Just a year earlier, Whitehall officials had provided their own warning of Russia’s willingness to use gas as a weapon after Moscow had threatened to restrict supplies to Georgia. A memo noted Russia needed to be informed that if it wanted to become a long-term energy supplier to Europe “capricious cuts in supply to their current customers are deeply unhelpful”.
However, newly released documents show that what became the bonhomie of the Blair-Bush relationship was far from being a given, despite Number 10 ensuring that the UK prime minister was the first foreign leader to call to congratulate the president-elect in December 2000 after the Supreme Court ruled he had won a disputed count in Florida over his opponent Al Gore.
The documents suggest Mr Blair and his aides wasted no time in cementing the relationship with the incoming administration thereafter. In the weeks preceding Mr Bush’s inauguration, the prime minister dispatched his chief of staff Jonathan Powell and foreign policy adviser John Sawers – a future head of MI6 – to Washington to meet with senior figures.
Mr Blair made his first visit to meet Mr Bush at his presidential retreat at Camp David early in 2001 – an encounter that went better than Number 10 had dared hope.
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