Camp David talks will test Blair's influence on Bush

Prime Minister is lionised in America, but elsewhere faces dissent as Short breaks ranks and Mandela raises spectre of a 'holocaust'

In Britain he may be portrayed as America's lapdog, obediently following George Bush into an Iraqi adventure over which he has no control. On this side of the Atlantic, Tony Blair will find himself lionised as Washington"s truest ally when he meets Mr Bush at Camp David today.

The warmth is evident everywhere, from newspaper opinion columns to public and private comments of US officials, so scornful of the "old Europe" of France and Germany. Nowhere, though, was this on greater show than at the British embassy last week.

The occasion was a farewell dinner for Sir Christopher Meyer, the departing ambassador, hosted – most unusually – by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. No less unusual was the glittering guest turn-out, "an A-list mix of politics, media and business", enthused The Washington Post.

They were there to say goodbye to an especially popular envoy, to be sure – but their presence also symbolised just how close the US feels to, if not Britain, then at least the British government.

Others are coming to Washington as the diplomatic endgame with Baghdad begins – an endgame the White House said would last "weeks, not months". The Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal, was in the Oval Office yesterday to discuss an Arab initiative to persuade Saddam Hussein to go into exile. Mr Bush said: "We would welcome that, should he choose to leave the country with his henchmen."

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister – who, like Mr Blair, is among the eight European leaders who have signed a letter of support for US policy on Iraq – also saw Mr Bush, a day after Italy agreed to allow the US to use its facilities for the war.

But few believe President Saddam will qo quietly and few, if any, Italian troops will be involved in a war to oust him. The visitor who matters most, for both psychological and military support, is Mr Blair – all the more because the Bush administration realises the opposition he faces at home for his uncompromising stance. The Blair-Bush relationship is superficially a paradox, an alliance between the conservative right and the new left. But both have a strongly moralistic approach to world affairs: "We are the ally of the US not because they are powerful but because we share their values," Mr Blair told Britain's ambassadors this month.

For all the insistence that war is not inevitable, the US and the UK have already declared Iraq in "material breach" of UN resolution 1441, the accepted trigger for the use of force. The Camp David talks will "plot the road map for the next few weeks," Sir Christopher said yesterday. This amounts to a timetable for war, barring an unlikely U-turn by Iraq.

London and Washington have made it clear that they will go to war without a new UN resolution. Talk of a delay has dissipated. Far more than Mr Bush, however, Mr Blair would like a second resolution – to make his domestic position less precarious and help heal the rift in Europe. That in turn largely depends on the case that Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, makes against Iraq in his Security Council presentation on Wednesday.

But the question, as always, is what private influence he has in return for his public support. "We should remain the closest ally of the US, and as allies influence them," Mr Blair says. Camp David will put that theory to the test.