BRITAIN: The grumblings within the UK's Foreign Office are getting louder. Officials complain the Israel-Lebanon war has brutally exposed the inexperience and inadequacies of Margaret Beckett as foreign secretary.
Since unexpectedly being given the job on May 5th, she has, critics say, been near-invisible. The Foreign Office has proposed to her making trips, speeches and interviews to raise her profile, almost all of which she has rejected.
"She should have, and could have, taken that advice. She is too nervous, too inexperienced: it is not her style," a former minister said. "It is difficult to pile into a job if you have not shown any interest in foreign affairs before. She is a safe pair of hands, but the foreign secretary has to be more than that. It is not a good appointment."
In her old environment post, Mrs Beckett earned a reputation as a tough negotiator across government departments, and also in Brussels, where she took on European governments. But foreign affairs has never been one of her interests, and to some observers the war has exposed her lack of background in the area.
Keith Simpson, the Conservatives' Middle East spokesman, used a cricket analogy. "She's very cautious, on the whole a defensive batsman. She slows everything down in debates." This style - excellent for handling the House of Commons and her own party - had been less successful in her new post, Mr Simpson said.
"She looks very tired and very anxious at the moment. She's not up to speed. She's in at the deep end and she realises that all the big decisions are being made by [ Tony] Blair, and her political antennae tell her that the policy she is defending is unpopular with the vast bulk of the Labour party." Her position was not helped at the weekend when her predecessor, Jack Straw, said the Israeli response had been "disproportionate".
Since the crisis blew up, Mrs Beckett has shunned the kind of shuttle diplomacy that her predecessors, Robin Cook and Mr Straw, engaged in. Both men were familiar with and had contacts in most of the Middle East capitals. In radio and television interviews, she has come across as tetchy, uncertain and uneasy in defending the agreed line of opposition to an immediate ceasefire.
It is remarkable, even without the war, that the new foreign secretary has not visited the Middle East, the centre of so many of the key foreign policy issues of the day, from the plight of the Palestinians to the near-civil war in Iraq. Instead, she has made a trip to Brazil, to New York for a summit on Iran, to Paris on the same issue, and to various European foreign ministers' meetings.
A senior European official who met her soon after her appointment was unimpressed, not only with her lack of knowledge about the Middle East but foreign affairs generally. "Frankly, there certainly was a need for a little homework," he said.
Tony Blair has increasingly come to dominate foreign policy, but Mr Cook, with his ethical foreign policy, and Mr Straw, with his policy of engagement with Iran, had an independence that Mrs Beckett has yet to demonstrate. A Labour MP with a close interest in the Foreign Office dismissed her as "assistant secretary for foreign affairs to the prime minister".
Mr Blair ignored Foreign Office advice in the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003 and he is ignoring it again on the Lebanon crisis. The senior European official said: "Her role is very difficult. It is a matter that has been taken directly by Blair. She has no background in this. I think Straw would have made a difference."
Mr Straw's strength was that he cultivated good relations with Iran in an attempt to avoid conflict on the nuclear issue. That remains one of Britain's diplomatic strengths: the US has no embassy in Tehran but Britain does and Mrs Beckett could go to Iran for talks, an option denied to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Britain also has a marginally better relationship with Syria than the US, which withdrew its ambassador last year.
A Foreign Office spokesman defended her yesterday, saying she had made nine to 12 phone calls over the weekend on the Lebanon issue. "She has been directing things back here," he said. "She is doing a lot of co-ordinating with other foreign ministers. She made a decision to send [ minister] Kim Howells out to the region and just decided to stay back in London, particularly with the prime minister going to Washington, and working the phones and overseeing strategy back here."
She is scheduled to attend a meeting of European foreign ministers today and may go to the United Nations security council later this week if the ambassadors there decide a resolution on Lebanon requires the presence of foreign ministers.
One MP reckoned that at the age of 63, after nine years in government and 22 on the frontbench, this was simply a post too far. "I would have myself put a younger person in there," he said.
Some MPs believe that media criticism should be better directed at Mrs Beckett's boss and that the failings in her position are those of Mr Blair.
"I'm very pleased I don't have to be on the radio and television at the moment defending their position, even though I broadly agree with it," said one former minister.