Blair's shuttle diplomacy vital for building coalition

In the three weeks since the US hijacks, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has crisscrossed the world, undertaking a gruelling series of journeys to help build the international coalition against terrorism.

The British Prime Minister, who sets great store by the value of face-to-face discussions with fellow world leaders, has flown thousands of miles in two rounds of exhausting shuttle diplomacy.

Immediately after hearing of the outrages on September 11, Mr Blair abandoned a speech he was due to make to the TUC Congress in Brighton and went to Downing Street.

There, he headed numerous meetings of the Government’s Cobra contingency planning committee and addressed MPs in an emergency session of Parliament, while keeping in constant touch with key world leaders by phone.

His first round of shuttle diplomacy began on September 19, when he held discussions with Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin, before flying on to Paris for breakfast talks with President Jacques Chirac the following day.

The next day, Mr Blair left for New York, where he met British victims of the World Trade Centre disaster, then travelled on to Washington to speak with US President George W Bush and attend a special session of Congress.

He flew overnight to Brussels for a crisis summit of European Union leaders the following day, arriving back in London late that evening, having covered more than 9,000 miles in three days.

Mr Blair set off on his second epic diplomatic trip on Thursday morning, shortly after addressing a recalled Parliament for the second time.

He flew to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin, then travelled on to Islamabad to speak to Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf yesterday, clocking up around 3,800 miles in the air.

The next stop for Mr Blair was India where he landed in the capital New Delhi last night. He is expected to meet with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today.

Downing Street has maintained a strict media blackout on Mr Blair’s schedule but he is expected to return to the UK later today.