Tony Blair will get nowhere in the Middle East until he focuses on the causes of Bin Laden, rather than waging war against him

If it's Tuesday, it's Damascus. You cannot fault our Prime Minister for effort. Straight after stiffening our sinews in Cardiff, there he was off again making (in the words of Jack Straw) another of his "relentless journeys" to shore up the international coalition against terrorism.

This is, according to one government official, the "predictable period of the collapsing consensus". But if Tony Blair is finding it increasingly hard to justify the military action at home, what are his chances of winning people over in the Middle East?

How do you conduct a media and diplomatic strategy in countries where the official government line is increasingly at variance with the popular mood? The military battle is fast making these questions impossible to answer. Downing Street remains sanguine. It is still holding to its conviction that "reasonableness" will prevail in the Arab world. In other words, ordinary people will accept that, however unpleasant the bombing may be, it is for a greater good.

But in the propaganda war in the Middle East, Blair's exhortation to "reasonableness" even as he skips over the root causes of the resentment felt towards the west, is missing the targets with as much frequency as the bombs appear to be doing.

Superficially, the media operation seems to cover all bases. The Millbank template of "rebuttal" and "lines to take" is being adapted for a broader stage. So we have interviews with al-Jazeera and with other London-based Arab news organisations. Middle Eastern journalists are invited in to No 10 for press conferences, alongside the more familiar faces of the lobby. A No 10 press team with a familiarly flimsy grasp of foreign languages and knowledge of foreign journalism, is to be beefed up to include more Middle Eastern specialists. The same is being done in Washington. It was partly for that purpose that Alastair Campbell made his not-so-secret trip to the White House late last month.

The effort, however, is largely missing the point.

Blair might accuse voters of forgetting all too easily the horrors of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But our policy towards the Middle East is amnesia personified. The moral arguments we cite as justification for the campaign against Bin Laden and al-Qaeda are selectively applied. Some countries' abuses of human rights and maltreatment of women, for example, are ignored so long as they are well disposed towards us. The same applies to the harbouring of terrorist groups. Middle Eastern leaders know that. They know that our assertiveness in the region ebbs and flows according to our self-interest.

There are other dangers specific to Blair's approach. By allowing himself to be portrayed as almost the equal of George Bush - "Britain is suffering from delusions of influence", as one government insider put it - Blair has acquired enormous responsibility and is running great risks, but has little power to change the course of events.

He can counsel Washington hawks about limiting the campaign to Afghanistan, but he can't stop them from extending it to other countries if they so choose. He can cajole Ariel Sharon into withdrawing from Bethlehem and Beit Jala, but as soon as his back is turned the Israeli prime minister may order his troops back in. He can ask President Assad to offer up Hamas or Hizbollah or Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on a plate. But the new Syrian leader may turn a deaf ear to his request.

The unpalatable truth is that we have very little to offer the Arab world in this campaign. Blair makes the point, time and again, that Bin Laden has the blood of many Muslims in the World Trade Center on his hands as well. But it simply isn't seen that way.

Even if Blair could deliver the one remaining carrot - making Sharon more "reasonable" (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) - how much difference would it make? Some in Whitehall take the view that the link between the "peace process" and the campaign against Bin Laden is being overdone. According to the campaign objectives paper, released from Oman during Blair's trip to the region, resolving the Arab-Israeli issue is "vital" to undermining the causes of international terrorism. Well, up to a point.

Bin Laden's embracing of the Palestinian cause is opportunist. Any Camp David-style resolution last year would have inconvenienced him, but is unlikely to have stopped his well-laid plans.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only one of many causes of resentment. It was Peter Hain, the minister with a licence to think, who yet again alighted on the broader issues. His speech on 30 October coincided with the Prime Minister's, thereby guaranteeing less coverage. But, shorn of simple rhetoric and unachievable promises, it attempted to diagnose the ills of the Middle East and beyond. Hain spoke of "grievances like poverty, injustice, intolerance, envy. The bitterness of life on the margin, the all-too-often frustrated desire for a voice in the decisions that shape the daily struggles of the disempowered, cycles of conflict and violence". In short, he spoke of the dangers that global poverty and inequality bring.

It is a reasonable stab at a diagnosis. But that is all it is at the moment. Until 11 September, Blair had not shown the political will even to begin addressing these underlying problems. Now, as he criss-crosses the Middle East, putting the case for "reasonableness" as the bombs continue to rain down on Afghanistan, his case will heard politely in the marbled palaces of the rulers; but it will be ignored or berated on the streets.

Britain might be a bit-part player in destroying Bin Laden's terrorist network. But it is further away than it ever was from tackling the reasons why anyone would ever want to die for him in the first place.

John Kampfner presents Profits of Doom, BBC2, 4 November, 7.15pm

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