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 licy has led to Blair's downfall, says top British UN official 
  
 Iraq policy has led to Blair's downfall, says top British UN official 
  
 By Paul Vallely 
  
 Tony Blair's policy in Iraq is what, ultimately, fatally undermined his 
 position as Prime Minister and forced him to step down, said the deputy 
 secretary general of the United Nations, Mark Malloch Brown, yesterday. 
  
 He said the Prime Minister's failure to call for an immediate ceasefire 
 during the Israeli bombing of Lebanon was the final nail in his coffin, 
 triggering the final rebellion by many previous loyalists, and he 
 suggested that Mr Blair had learnt no lessons from his earlier 
 unquestioning support of the United States. 
  
 Asked whether Mr Blair might be a candidate for the job of UN secretary 
 general when Kofi Annan steps down at the end of the year, Mr Malloch 
 Brown said: "There's absolutely no break in the view that this time it 
 is Asia's turn to get the top UN job." South Korea's Foreign Minister 
 Ban Ki-moon is the front-runner to succeed Mr Annan. 
  
 And privately, UN insiders suggest that Mr Blair has no chance. It was 
 always unlikely that the job would go to a figure from one of the 
 permanent members of the Security Council. "They are felt already to be 
 over-privileged," one UN source said. "But Iraq has finished him. Mr 
 Blair seems not to appreciate just how disliked and distrusted he is in 
 other nations." 
  
 It is not a view Mr Malloch Brown shares. "I'm profoundly sorry about 
 it," he said of Mr Blair's looming departure as Prime Minister. "On what 
 he's done for Africa, what he's done for development and the use he made 
 of the G8 on climate change, he has been the best international leader 
 of his time. So it's a tragedy that there's been this on the other side 
 of the ledger." 
  
 Mr Malloch Brown, whose term of office runs out at the end of December, 
 was also critical of Mr Bush and Mr Blair's "megaphone diplomacy" on the 
 Darfur crisis. "The Sudanese know we don't have troops to go in against 
 a hostile Khartoum government," he said. "That would be tantamount to 
 fighting a war with Sudan. 
  
 "It's not just a credible threat... Tony Blair and George Bush need to 
 get beyond this posturing and grandstanding." 
  
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