Don't mention the war, Mr Prime Minister

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">Our prime minister surely wanders into a gathering storm when he arrives in London on Monday. It will be Dr Manmohan Singh''s first non-Asian overseas destination since he took office. He will get the full treatment — a Downing Street press conference; the warm Tony Blair handshake; the winsome, toothy grin; a joint prime ministerial breaking of bread.<br /><br />As also, the somewhat tenuous togetherness of a strategic policy initiative.This is the way diplomatic coupling is done — solemn vows to have and to hold, garnished with trade and military deals and promises to liberalise eastern markets or facilitate the eastward jobs flow.<br /><br />Diplomacy does not like directness. All the chances are Dr Singh will find it hard, if not impossible, to ask his British counterpart any of the things he really wants to know. If anything, the theme song for the Singh-Blair meetings is the Elvis hit, A little less conversation.<br /><br />For instance, Singh cannot really ask whether Cherie, Blair''s smart, sassy, legal eagle wife, is within her rights to do the equivalent of a literary striptease. Singh will have to choke back any questions about The Goldfish Bowl, Cherie''s just-published, over- hyped book describing the perils and pleasures of being married to the prime minister.<br /><br />He could not mention the book for fear of blurting out a question about Cherie''s teasing unveiling and then dive back into a verbal <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">burqa</span>. Very few relationships are entirely harmonious, she admits in her little homily on prime ministerial coupledom. But then she refuses to illustrate with anything more innocuous than the decidedly low-wattage marriage of that long-ago PM, Harold Macmillan.<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section2"><div class="Normal"><br />Cherie''s reticence may desperately beg the question, but it is not one Singh could ask. The trouble is he cannot talk freely and frankly about the only other thing occupying the minds of politicians, press and public up and down the land the Iraq impasse and Tony Blair''s extraordinary decision to draw Britain into the risky US-led venture, regardless of repeated official warnings about domestic political cost, dubious legality and distinct lack of long-term planning and exit strategy.<br /><br />Our PM meets Britain''s embattled one just days after UN secretary general Kofi Annan allowed the word illegal to describe the invasion of Iraq. Dropping like an injunction on Blair-Bush moral self-righteousness, that one word has changed everything and nothing.<br /><br />Till illegal became UN-speak, Annan had always described the Anglo- American occupation as not in conformity with the UN charter. Technically, his position remains unchanged today but the linguistic leap takes the Iraq debate into dangerously fraught territory.<br /><br />It can only reinforce the emerging anti-war Berlin- Paris-Madrid axis, which so recently and publicly held hands for the cameras in stark contrast to Spain''s previous juxtaposition with a gung-ho US and UK.<br /><br />The new axis, which can only challenge existing alliances within the EU, potentially weakens Blair''s Britain in the rundown to an expected May general election. The goldfish bowl is getting increasingly cloudy for Blair. But for Singh, it''ll still be a little less conversation — don''t mention the war.</div> </div>