Blair sets out on Middle East "Mission Impossible"

By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Tony Blair begins his first visit to the region as Middle East envoy on Monday, hoping he can help turn around 60 years of peacemaking failures since Britain ended its mandate over Palestine.

"Mission Impossible" is what the sceptics have, inevitably, already called the newly retired prime minister's mandate.

He has been asked by the Quartet powers -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- to present by September an initial plan for building ruling institutions needed to establish a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

That more limited mandate, which he will discuss with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on a visit of barely 48 hours, may be expanded later into a more direct peacemaking role between the parties, a senior Western diplomat said on Sunday.

This week, however, Blair "is coming very much in listening mode", a spokesman for the former British leader said.

Blair faces serious obstacles to success in a role that has doomed all his predecessors.

The goal of a state appears more remote than ever, with the Palestinian territories divided between Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction in the occupied West Bank.

Israel's government may be too weak to deliver concessions such as the withdrawal of Jewish settlements. Many Arabs resent Blair's role in invading Iraq, and the Quartet remains divided over whether he should have a broader negotiating mandate.