WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- It looked cozy enough in the television news -- roaring fire, big chintz-covered armchairs, both leaders coatless. No different, in fact, from Tony Blair's previous sleepovers at Camp David, President George W. Bush's retreat in Maryland. But this week's visit was both the same and also different.
Despite the fire, well informed diplomatic sources said, there was an unprecedented hint of coolness as the remarkable Bush-Blair partnership faces the dual strains of a war not going according to plan, and looming differences over how to reshape post-conflict Iraq.
The widely held perception in Washington that all the consortium's troops had to do was kick the door in and Saddam Hussein's regime would collapse has turned out to be wishful thinking. The war is turning out to be a much bigger challenge than anticipated. Every day more military experts have been predicting a tougher, wider conflict, with every inch of the way gained at human cost.
Instead of the "cake walk" and the "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder" that administration officials and gung-ho conservative advisers were predicting, Bush's new mantra is that the war will last, "However long it takes to win."
A few days before Blair's departure for Washington, Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the exchequer (and Blair's rival for the Labor party leadership), was forced to double Britain's war budget.
But with more than 40,000 of Britain's best troops in action in Iraq, the British patriotic sense has kicked in, giving Blair's position at home a much-needed boost. Two weeks ago, only 19 percent of Britons approved of going to war without a U.N. mandate. On Saturday it was close to 60 percent.
Still, the political reality remains the same: short war plus low casualty rate equals success; long war plus high casualty rate equals Blair is toast -- and possibly Bush as well.
At Camp David, Bush and Blair reviewed the rules of engagement, and the diplomatic sources said they gave their approval to raising the level of military pressure, defined by increasing the number of troops, opening a northern front, and intensifying the bombing on Baghdad targets.
The Bush-Blair news conference in Washington on Thursday offered several glimpses of Blair doing his now familiar political balancing act between loyal support for Washington and Britain's role and obligations in Europe.
He repeated his impassioned conviction that the U.S.-led war against Saddam was right, but there was more than a hint of conciliation with the war's European opponents. Answering the question "Why haven't you got (French, German, and Turkish) support?" Blair replied, "There's no point in denying it... there is a part of Europe that disagrees with what we are doing... We believed that we had to act. Others disagreed. At some point, we will have to come back and we'll have to discuss how the disagreement arose."
Bush, on the other hand, dodged the question entirely. "We've got a huge coalition," he said, and there was no attempt to echo Blair's more conciliatory approach.
Ahead loom larger differences over the question of who will govern post-Saddam Iraq. Both called for the resumption of the U.N.'s food-for-oil program, and Friday the Security Council voted to extend by 45 days U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's authority to dispense humanitarian aid from the program.
But the gap in understanding between Washington and London widens when it comes to U.S. plans for governing Iraq once Saddam has been removed. As explained by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Capitol Hill, "the center of gravity" will remain "the coalition, military and civilian."
This is Powell-speak for a military administration run by a U.S. general to restore a measure of normalcy. Eventually, a government of Iraqi civilians will take over, but there is no confirmed official time frame for the change.
Informed observers say Blair shares other European leaders' distaste for a formula that installs a U.S. military administration because it makes the whole thing look more like occupation than liberation. "It is important... that the U.N. is involved, and that any post-conflict administration in Iraq is endorsed by it," Blair said in Washington.
But the Bush administration, still harboring resentment at the Security Council's failure to support the U.S.-led military action against Saddam, has no plans currently to give the United Nations a major role, beyond the humanitarian effort, in post-Saddam Iraq.
Compare Blair's view of how the reconstruction should proceed with Powell's testimony on the Hill last week. "We didn't take on the huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future," Powell declared. "(The United States) would not support handing everything over to the U.N., or someone designated by the U.N. to suddenly become in charge of the whole operation."
Blair would find it difficult to explain to his party why Britain was either a part of, or at least accepted, a de facto U.S. military occupation. The Downing Street view, as British commentators point out, is that a U.N.-governed reconstruction program, shared and under the authority of the United Nations would be a good way of healing differences in the international community. It would also make a start in repairing relations between the United States and Europe.
Can Blair use his special relationship with Bush to cobble up a compromise plan?
France and Russia threaten to veto any U.N. resolution giving the United States a major role in the reconstruction ostensibly because that would retroactively bestow legitimacy on the U.S.-led war, which many nations regard as illegal. But another reason is that Paris and Moscow don't want U.S. firms to monopolize the huge contracts for reconstruction that are already being handed out.
The United States would prefer to steer clear of the never-never land of Security Council resolutions. A White House nightmare involves the United States having to accept a U.N.-appointed French civilian as administrator for Iraq.
Blair hinted at differences of approach over how to put Iraq together again once Humpty Hussein had his great fall. But having identified the problem he said, "There are a huge amount of details as to exactly how it is to be implemented that have to be a matter of discussion" -- a tactic known in diplomacy as "kicking the can down the road," when an issue is raised but no solution offered.
Blair also pressed Bush for action on the Middle East peace process. European leaders -- Blair included -- believe the groundswell of world opposition to the war, and in particular Arab opposition, could be reduced if the Bush administration were to move forward now on the "road map" for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, fathered jointly by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.
The road map has yet to be released in detail, but is known to consist of a series of steps, such as the end of attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants, and on the Israeli side a halt to building new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The road map will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005. As recently as March 14, Bush promised to unveil the plan once a Palestinian prime minister took office. Mahmoud Abbas, more widely known as Abu Mazen, became the Palestinians' first prime minister earlier this month and is holding talks to form a Cabinet.
Blair pressed Bush to stick to his word. There is wide belief -- even in Washington -- that the Bush administration will drag its feet on the peace effort until the Iraq war is resolved. But Blair argues that tackling the war and seeking an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict simultaneously will demonstrate that the alliance is "even handed."
