Britain ex-PM Blair meets Turkish leaders on Middle East

Ankara (AFP) – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday met Turkish Premier Ahmet Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara for talks on the Middle East, state media said.
Blair, who is spearheading his own Middle East peace initiative, met Davutoglu for 70 minutes of talks at the premier’s headquarters in Cankaya Palace in downtown Ankara, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
He then met Erdogan for one-and-a-half hours at his presidential palace on the outskirts of the capital, it added.
There was no detail on the content of the talks from the closed-door meetings. But a source told AFP that Blair “discussed the Middle East and the wider region” with the Turkish leaders.
Blair, who was British premier from 1997-2007 and then served as an envoy for the Middle East peacemaking Quartet for eight years, last week launched a new campaign for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Quartet — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — appointed Blair to support the Palestinian economy and institutions in preparation for eventual statehood.
But his tenure failed to produce a meaningful breakthrough.