- 8 Aug 06, 02:12 PM
There are many things that prime ministers would like to do to chief political correspondents, but one form of torture that's open to them is the early morning interview.
The call tends to come late at night - "could you be at Downing Street for 0630 hours tomorrow for a quick chat with the PM?"
And despite the resulting lack of sleep and the hastily re-arranged plans, it is of course an offer you can't refuse. So it was that early this morning the PM and I peered at each other across microphones in the Cabinet Room and tried to make sense of the Middle East conflict (watch the interview here).
It's his last interview before finally leaving for his holiday in the Caribbean, and his message was clear: the UN should "take account" of Lebanon's concerns that the draft UN resolution doesn't call for Israel to withdraw from its territory. But that shouldn't mean agreement on the resolution should be subject to any further delay.
But how do you get the Lebanese onside?
Well, some of the thinking in Number 10 goes like this - you persuade Lebanon that the Israelis are keen to leave and will do so in the short term, after a cessation of violence, but only if they can be replaced by a mixture of Lebanese troops and existing UN forces which are already on the ground (they are called Unifil, they number about 2000 and they've been there for years).
These troops, Downing Street sources suggest, could be "bolstered" and given a more active role. So under this scenario, there'd be no big bang withdrawal by Israel, just a slow, incremental, coordinated pull back, with no vacuum filled by Hezbollah. That at least is the theory. There are a lot of 'ifs' built into the plan and the reality on the ground, as ever, could prove rather different.
And what of that other transfer of power, following the withdrawal of Mr Blair from the Whitehall region?
Well, keen to ensure there's no vacuum at the heart of government, Mr Blair has as expected handed over the reins to John Prescott who's now "coordinating government policy" - civil service speak for sort of being in charge. But will the deputy prime minister have be dealing with the Middle East?
"I've always been in charge of this," Mr Blair said this morning. "I do that by telephone wherever I am." So, now we know.
