Blair 'was deluded about relations with Moscow'

Tony Blair has been criticised for being deluded over his close relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, by a former senior British diplomat, Sir Christopher Meyer.

Sir Christopher, a diplomat in the Moscow embassy before being made British ambassador to the United States, said the former prime minister had failed to secure British interests in his dealings Russia.

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"Blair had a delusion - which was ridiculous - about what he could achieve, so did Bush for that matter," said Sir Christopher. "Blair was early to spot that Putin was the rising man, and he took some risks. He had a meeting with him before he became President of Russia. But in having done that, having created the relationship, the question is what do you do with it? What do you do to serve Britain's interests? There I think T Blair was stumped and never asked for anything back.

"It was like a trophy relationship. In the end it blew back on him and Gordon Brown and the rest of us."

Sir Christopher, who is now the head of the Press Complaints Commission, supported the expulsion of the four Russian diplomats, but said the Blair government had failed to be realistic about relations with Russia. He said the relationship of Western powers to Russia was co-operative and adversarial at the same time. "They are never going to be clutched to the bosom of the Western powers. It's always going to be lumpy and bumpy and we ought to accept that."

He added: "Even after the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union, I was always told by people in the security services that the level of activity by the Russian intelligence services showed no diminution at all. They are as active under the new Russia as they were under the old Soviet Union.

"This is a boil that should have been lanced a long time ago. The thing about the Russian security services is that if they can get away with these things they will go on doing it until they are stopped.

"There is a long continuity here which goes back to Tsarist Russia - about a fear of encirclement, fear of enemies send the spies out to make sure no one is plotting against Russia, destroy your enemies. It goes back beyond the revolution and Soviet communism and it continues to this day."

Jim Murphy, a Foreign Office minister, yesterday ruled out any possibility of accepting a trial in a third country of the Russian wanted for murdering the former spy Alexander Litvinenko. Trial in a third country had been suggested by Boris Berezovsky, the Russian dissident in London, as a way of breaking the stand-off between Mr Putin and Gordon Brown over Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: "We want Mr Lugovoy tried in a UK court. That means on British soil and British soil means in the UK."

Mr Murphy said Britain hoped the diplomatic tit-for-tat over the expulsion of the four Russian diplomats from London would not be widened. "It was a decision taken with deep, deep regret," he told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.