WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair Friday reaffirmed his country's staunch support for the United States, endorsing President Bush's plans to deal with global hotspots despite increased pressure on the U.S. leader due to bad news abroad.
"Our two countries have been friends and allies standing side by side, and we will continue to do so," Blair told reporters at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.
Bush and Blair presented a choreographed and tightly unified view of the way to move forward in global hotspots -- the Middle East peace process, the war in Iraq and the global war on terror.
"We will stand firm," Blair said regarding the war in Iraq. "We will do what it takes to win this struggle. We will not yield. We will not back down in the face of attacks, either on us or on defenseless civilians."
Their meeting came at the tail end of a week of diplomacy for Bush, a week in which difficult news from the war on terror took center stage, including the re-emergence of suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
An audiotape broadcast on two Arab television stations Thursday of the voice of someone identified as bin Laden offered European countries a truce if they pulled their troops out of Iraq, but also vowed to avenge Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Hamas network that the United States has classified as a terrorist organization.
Officials from the Central Intelligence Agency said the tape appeared to be from bin Laden.
The United States also has been privy to increased "chatter" regarding possible terror attacks. "Credible and specific threats" led the State Department to send home U.S. personnel from Saudi Arabia, while a Saudi newspaper reported al-Qaida had planned attacks in Jordan on the country's intelligence headquarters and the U.S. Embassy.
In Iraq, Sunni Muslim clerics who are part of a three-party effort to broker a truce between insurgents and coalition troops in Fallujah said U.S. forces were further fueling conflict by reinforcing their positions around the country.
Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric coalition authorities said has incited the violence in Fallujah that has killed hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of Americans, struck a defiant note in an interview with a Beirut daily.
"If I am killed or arrested, the Iraqi masses will know how to respond with force," he said.
Despite this backdrop of violence, the British prime minister and the U.S. president provided a united front Friday. Blair's promises to stick through the violence in Iraq and adamant adherence to the June 30 deadline to transfer authority to Iraqis echoed statements the president had made to Americans in recent days.
Blair also endorsed a plan that has been a bright spot in the president's otherwise somber week, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel was prepared to pull out of Gaza and select settlements in the West Bank.
Like the administration, Blair appeared impatient with questions about the agreement and whether it would prejudice final-status agreements between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Now, forgive me, but I've been dealing with this for almost a decade," Blair said in response to a question about the agreement. "And it's been very, very difficult ever to get a situation where an Israeli prime minister is prepared to say, we're actually going to take these settlements away -- and make that not conditional on something that the Palestinians are doing, but say, we're just going to do that."
Sharon's concession, Blair said, marks a "chance to reinvigorate progress on the road map," the Middle East peace plan Bush advanced last year that has been all but scuttled.
The Palestinian leadership "must rise to the challenge," he said, but added that he was interested in seeing international organizations take a role in the process. Among the coalitions named were the Group of Eight industrialized nations and the Quartet -- the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -- adding a strong international flair to the arrangement.
Despite Blair's endorsement, however, the European Union said it would not agree to any plan that changed Israeli borders from pre-1967 placements, British media reported.
In his comments on Iraq, Blair echoed statements the president made in a rare prime-time news conference Tuesday, when he promised the United States and coalition forces would transfer sovereignty to Iraqis on the original June 30 deadline. "We will not step back from our pledge. On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands," he said Tuesday.
Blair's was the last of three major meetings this week for Bush, who also saw Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Sharon. For his own part, Blair's visit to the United States began with a stop at the United Nations, where he met with Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "We all need to pool our efforts ... because we cannot afford to fail in Iraq," Annan said Thursday.
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