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Ahead of election, Miliband says PM Cameron has squandered Britain's global clout

Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband addresses an audience during a campaign stop in Manchester, northern England, April 21, 2015. REUTERS/Andrew Yates

By William James LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron has squandered Britain's influence by forging an inward-looking approach to international affairs that has left the world's fifth largest economy isolated, opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband will say on Friday. Less than two weeks before a May 7 election, Miliband will seek to drag Cameron's foreign policy record to the heart of the campaign which has so far seen almost no debate of international affairs beyond references to immigration. Citing Cameron's absence from Franco-German talks on Ukraine with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, the chaos in Libya and the Conservative promise of a vote on European Union membership, Miliband said the prime minister has torpedoed British clout. "Cameron has presided over the biggest loss of influence for our country in a generation," Miliband will tell an audience in London, according to excerpts of the speech released by his office to reporters. "It is time to reject the small-minded isolationism that has characterised this government, diminished the office of Prime Minister and shrunk the influence of Britain." In what opinion polls indicate is the closest British election in a generation, Miliband and Cameron are the only likely candidates to lead Britain's next government. Miliband will use his biggest foreign policy speech of the campaign to accuse Cameron of putting short-term party political interests ahead of the national interest, especially over Europe. Cameron, he said, promised a referendum on European Union membership by the end of 2017 to appease Eurosceptics in his party and to counter the rise of the UK Independence Party, which has poached Conservative voters. "This government’s approach to Europe means that even when Britain’s interests are shared by other member states, EU leaders are reluctant to support us because they think we already have one foot out the door," he will say. "He has taken us to the edge of European exit because he has been too weak to control his own party and too anxious about the rise of UKIP, a rise he could and should have challenged, but pandered to instead." SHADOW OF IRAQ Miliband's critique of Cameron includes reference to the deaths in the Mediterranean of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa as the direct result of a failure of Cameron's post-conflict planning for Libya. Casting Cameron as an isolationalist failure on the world stage, Miliband pledges "a hard-headed multilateralism" and says he has learned the lessons of the U.S.-led 2003 war in Iraq which was supported by Tony Blair, then Labour prime minister. Miliband's biggest foray into foreign policy to date was in 2013 when he angered British ministers and some U.S. politicians by opposing military intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In a humiliating defeat for Cameron that strained the "special relationship" with the United States, Miliband scuppered British parliamentary support for military action, a factor in Barack Obama's decision to drop his military plans. The advance extracts of Miliband's speech contained no reference to the United States, Britain's closest military ally for more than a century and a country where Miliband once went to school while his father was lecturing at a U.S. university. Miliband, the Oxford-educated son of a Belgian Marxist intellectual of Polish origin, gave little sense of how Britain should respond to a haze of failed states and civil wars stretching from Afghanistan and the Middle East to the Sahel. "We must also learn the lessons of previous interventions. These are the vital lessons of our recent past and I will not forget them," Miliband will say. "Legitimate interventions must be supported by international, regional and local players, carried out with a clearly defined strategy, as well as include a comprehensive transition and post conflict strategy." Miliband, who describes himself as a Jewish Atheist, will also call for major world powers to bolster the role of the United Nations in resolving conflicts in the Middle East, including between the Israelis and Palestinians. Miliband angered some Jewish voters in 2014 when he instructed his party to support a symbolic motion in the British parliament in favour of recognising Palestine as a state. (Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)