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"Details, please!!!!"

Bill and Tony's excruciating adventure
By Philip Webster, The Times
30sep03

Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were not the close pals they appeared to be, a new book about Mr Blair's relations with George W. Bush and his predecessor reveals.

Mr Blair and Mr Clinton had several rows, one of them lasting 90 minutes.
Mr Blair found the president "weird", and his team was heavily uncomplimentary about the Clinton contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process. As for his successor, Mr Blair bombarded Mr Bush with a stream of confidential advice, particularly in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the US.

The messages, comparable with those sent by Churchill to Roosevelt during World War II, have remained a secret but are revealed in the book Hug Them Close by Peter Riddell, chief political commentator with The Times.

British officials, anxious to avoid the image of the Prime Minister seeming too close to the President, have said little or nothing about them. The book reveals that Mr Blair wrote them frequently, in a familiar jerky style, highlighting areas for action. Many are thought to have been messages about Mr Blair's world travels as he tried to keep the international coalition together for action against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Charting the Blair-Clinton relationship, Riddell says that in the early days Mr Blair seemed overawed by the elder man's pyrotechnics. The relationship always had an "edge", according to an adviser who was present at all their meetings and saw it as "master and pupil". But after Mr Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, he asserted himself and was never entirely at ease with Mr Clinton when they were both in office. He did not like playing the junior partner and told a senior civil servant he found Mr Clinton "weird".

According to a senior minister, Mr Clinton's role in Northern Ireland was "hugely exaggerated". The two men fell out during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. There were several clashes and what Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador in Washington, told Riddell was a "very angry" 90-minute phone call between the two. There was a "huge, monumental explosion" from the president about a British briefing and an article in The New York Times that suggested British unhappiness at Mr Clinton's reluctance to consider ground troops.

Riddell was told by a senior civil servant Mr Blair would have liked to have been a president.

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