Guardian<\/a> de ce jour :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00ab The British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells refused to back down over his controversial comments about the Lebanon conflict when he arrived in Israel yesterday, repeating his calls for Israelis to show proportionality and restraint. Mr Howells ignored the diplomatic convention that he tone down his comments because of his presence in the host country, saying the Israelis have got to think very hard about those children who are dying.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bb His strong comments about the impact of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon contrast with the uncritical support given to Israel and the US by Tony Blair and the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett. The government is portraying Mr Howells as an emotional individual speaking his mind about what he has seen on the ground, rather than a government minister determining a new policy direction.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bb Mrs Beckett spoke by phone to Mr Howells yesterday morning. Afterwards a Foreign Office spokesman said: They are absolutely at one. Downing Street too insisted there was no split.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bb Mr Howells spent Saturday in Beirut seeing bombed-out ruins. Talking of civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure, he said: These have not been surgical strikes. And it’s very, very difficult I think to understand the kind of military tactics that have been used. Yesterday, in an interview in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, Mr Howells said the Israelis know only too well it is not enough just to seek a military victory, they have got to win a wider political battle. That means they have got to think very hard about those children who are dying. It is not enough to say it is unfortunate collateral damage. Every person who has got a mobile phone, every person who can take a photograph of somebody being blown to bits, or a child with a limb missing, is a reporter now. At some stage, he said, the Israelis had around 60 jets flying over the Mediterranean, readying for strikes in Lebanon. I think it is something the whole world should worry a great deal about, he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bb Mrs Beckett, interviewed on BBC Radio Four yesterday, insisted there was no difference between the line espoused by Downing Street and herself, and Mr Howells. I think basically what he is saying is that Israel has been saying all the way through that they are targeting Hizbullah. And there are bound to be problems because Hizbullah have entrenched themselves in relatively speaking ordinary neighbourhoods not totally, but to a very large extent, Mrs Beckett said. What Kim is saying is that targeting Hizbullah is one thing and one understands why it is being done, but it is not working in the way that Israel had hoped and claimed that it was. And so that’s why we have to continue to … urge recognition of that danger on Israel.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tL’image est celle de la confusion. Un Premier ministre dramatiquement sous perfusion, soutenant une politique compl\u00e8tement discr\u00e9dit\u00e9e, avec pour g\u00e9rer l’affaire libanaise une ministre des affaires \u00e9trang\u00e8res novice, tiraill\u00e9e entre sa fid\u00e9lit\u00e9 contrainte au PM qui l’a nomm\u00e9e et un Foreign Office de plus en plus hostile \u00e0 Isra\u00ebl. L\u00e0-dessus, un jeune sous-ministre, Kim, qui n’a pas sa langue dans la poche et qui entend repr\u00e9senter une alternative \u00e0 la politique actuelle en en faisant un peu trop (pour Blair) dans le r\u00f4le de compl\u00e9ment (\u00e9quilibrer la balance en disant quelques mots de compassion pour les civils tu\u00e9s par les Isra\u00e9liens), et en s’affirmant bient\u00f4t sur le devant de la sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tReprenons : Blair est dans un \u00e9tat path\u00e9tique, sa politique aussi, par cons\u00e9quent son gouvernement. C’est le temps du d\u00e9sordre et des affirmations individuelles, sans doute peupl\u00e9es d’arri\u00e8re-pens\u00e9es politiques, comme c’est bien normal. Kim Howells entend bien tirer son \u00e9pingle du jeu jusqu’o\u00f9 il pourra. Ces gammes et chausse-trapes de politique int\u00e9rieure ont une r\u00e9percussion internationale importante en affaiblissant notablement l’axe anglo-saxon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 24 juillet 2006 \u00e0 12H10<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alors qu’hier la chose \u00e9tait pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e comme tactique, aujourd’hui elle para\u00eet plut\u00f4t pol\u00e9mique. Le d\u00e9sordre (cr\u00e9ateur ou pas, on verra) \u00e9tant partout, il est \u00e9galement \u00e0 Londres. Les \u00e9carts de l’adjoint de la secr\u00e9taire au Foreign Office Kim Howells se confirment et s’amplifient, commen\u00e7ant \u00e0 mettre Blair et sa fine politique dans une position difficile.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5367,705,5671,2774,5611],"class_list":["post-67788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-beckett","tag-blair","tag-howells","tag-israel","tag-liban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}