Patrick Wintour in San Francisco and Tania Branigan
Monday July 31, 2006
The Guardian

Tony Blair yesterday responded to a growing backbench and cabinet revolt over his handling of the Middle East crisis by saying the Qana bombing showed that a peace agreement must be reached.
Mr Blair has been under mounting internal criticism for refusing to endorse calls for an immediate unconditional ceasefire or to condemn the Israeli bombing as disproportionate.

He has instead focused on securing a UN resolution to deploy a multinational force in southern Lebanon.

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"What happened at Qana shows this situation simply cannot continue," he said last night. "This is an absolutely tragic situation, but we have got to make sure the discussions we are having and the negotiations we are conducting does lead to a genuine cessation of hostilities."
Downing Street slapped down the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, who at the weekend condemned Israeli action as disproportionate and likely to undermine support across the Middle East.

Mr Blair's spokesman denied a cabinet revolt over his handling of the issue, although cabinet sources said there was widespread concern that the prime minister's position leaves the government open to the charge that it is indifferent to the suffering of the Lebanese people.

Some cabinet members pointed out that Mr Straw, the leader of the house, had not voiced concerns in last week's cabinet meeting.

The leading figure to express concern at the Israeli action was David Miliband, the environment, food and rural affairs secretary. Allies of Mr Straw, who is now on holiday, insisted he made every effort to quote accurately the words of the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells who visited the region recently.

Speaking during a round of interviews in the US, Mr Blair told Channel 5: "There was a perfectly good discussion at the cabinet actually and it certainly wasn't a divisive discussion at all. Of course what they were saying is 'let us make sure with urgency we can stop a situation that's killing innocent people'."

Mr Blair was expected to reassert robustly his view that the "underlying cause" of the conflict - Islamic terrorism - must be addressed when he made a speech to executives from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp organisation in California last night.