In Britain, 52 former British diplomats have taken the unprecedented move of writing Prime Minister Tony Blair an open letter condemning his close alliance with President Bush and the “doomed” Middle East policy of the United States. The diplomats wrote to Blair that they had “watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close cooperation with the United States.” The letter also criticized the Bush administration’s new stance backing the existence of illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.