Tony Blair wanted to welcome Vladimir Putin with birthday cufflinks
Newly-released documents show how Tony Blair wanted to encourage the Russian leader to “reach for western attitudes”
Tony Blair gave President Putin silver cufflinks for his birthday 20 years ago and argued that he should be given a seat at the international “top table” despite deep misgivings about the new Russian leader.
The gift is revealed in confidential papers released by the National Archives in Kew, which also disclose how the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi wanted to send Putin to resolve the crisis between India and Pakistan which threatened to develop into war. His suggestion that other Nato leaders should join Putin was dismissed as a “terrible idea” by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state.
Blair’s gift was made during a tour of Russia, India and Pakistan in the days before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. An aide said Putin would be the first leader to have the new Downing Street cufflinks.
The files also reveal Blair’s efforts to woo George W Bush as he took over the presidency. After a phone conversation between Blair and the president elect in December 2000, in which Bush said he wanted to work as closely as possible with “your wonderful country”, Michael Tatham, the No 10 private secretary, wrote: “The prime minister asked early on if he could call the president-elect by his first name: Bush warmly assented (but stuck himself to addressing the prime minister as ‘sir’).”
Berlusconi’s suggestion to use Putin as a peacemaker was made at a lunch for world leaders at the Nato-Russia Council in May 2002 when troops were massing on both sides of the India-Pakistan border as tensions rose over the disputed Kashmir region.
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According to Sir David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser, Berlusconi added that Nato leaders could join Putin at a security conference in Kazakhstan. Manning said: “Condi Rice commented to me that this was ‘a terrible idea’ that could only complicate our efforts to handle the crisis.”
When Blair met Bush’s vice-president Dick Cheney at Camp David, a note of the meeting said Blair described Putin as a “Russian patriot” saying that “it was better to allow Putin a position on the top table and encourage Putin to reach for western attitudes as well as the western economic model”.
However, a No 10 briefing note from January 2001, barely a year after Putin took power, highlighted officials’ concerns. “Despite the warmth of Putin’s rhetoric about the close links between Russia and the UK, the Russian intelligence effort against British targets remains at a high level,” it said.
The document also listed assurances Putin gave Blair which turned out to be false, such as that Moscow would stop supplying Iran’s nuclear programme.
Putin told Blair that he did not want to be seen as anti-Nato, but the Russian defence minister Igor Sergeyev told his Nato counterparts that further enlargement would be a major political error, in response to which Moscow would “take appropriate steps”.