 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Missing ingredients
By Dina EzzatTalking to the US about the futility of its strikes against Iraq, coordinating with the French to secure assurances for the Palestinians that it would be worthwhile to delay the declaration of their state, and engaging with the UN to arrange a face-saving resolution of the Lockable affair are the types of efforts that have been, and will continue to be, the focus of Egyptian diplomacy.
Upcoming visits to world capitals by top state officials will give prominence to these issues, which are the most pressing Arab concerns and which, because there is no united Arab position, are unlikely to be settled by inter-Arab efforts.
Over the past few days, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa has been on the telephone with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and has been exchanging messages with his US and French counterparts. Furthermore, Cairo has been keeping the door open for Israeli political figures who want to discuss the future of Arab-Israeli relations.
The aim of these contacts, which are expected to intensify, is to help get Iraq, Libya and the Palestinian Authority out of the political and economic stagnation in which they have been mired for so long.
The parameters that govern Egyptian efforts, as defined by the foreign minister, are nothing that Arab countries disagree with: "The UN Security Council cannot stand idle while Iraq is being subjected to these daily strikes, which are really unacceptable and cannot be expected to just go on"; "Iraq needs to cooperate with, and fully implement, the resolutions of the Security Council"; "In the meantime, Iraq is a sovereign state but this sovereignty is being challenged by what is happening in the country's north and south"; "Extraditing the two Libyan suspects [in the Lockerbie affair after Tripoli is offered relevant assurances] should immediately lead to the suspension of the [UN] sanctions imposed on Libya"; "The Palestinians have to have their state; there is no arguing about this, even if the date of the proclamation of this state is open for discussion"; and "The future of Jerusalem is still open for negotiation and can only be settled in accordance with the will of the concerned parties".
This means that when the Security Council meets to discuss Iraq in mid-April, its decision should not be to send UNSCOM, under the chairmanship of the notorious Richard Butler, back to Baghdad. Instead, the Council should wait until Butler's contract expires in June to reorganise UNSCOM under a new chairmanship. It should also mean that the UN secretary-general must convince the US that the 30-day deadline it gave to Libya for the extradition of the two suspects does not necessarily mean the offer lapses if Gaddafi does not hand over the two suspects by the second week of April.
Moreover, it should mean that the US, the European Union and leading Asian states, such as China and Japan, which President Hosni Mubarak will visit in the first week of April, publicly support the right of the Palestinians to declare a state, if the Palestinian Authority agrees to making 31 December, and not 4 May, the date for its proclamation.
So, why should Arab countries have a problem with these positions? The answer is simple: Arab countries disagree on the formulas for resolving these issues as well as the political price that must be paid. "The current Arab situation is extremely bleak, to say the least, so there is not much sense in thinking that any of these problems could be solved by sheer Arab will; the ingredients for Arab action are simply not there," said one source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Gulf states do not want to yield an inch to Iraq, for fear that it would take a mile. Sources say that most Gulf states have told US Defence Secretary William Cohen, during his recent tour of the Middle East, that they are not going to be openly very critical of US policy on Iraq, provided that the US guarantees the Iraq crisis is not going to spill over and destabilise Gulf countries. For its part, Iraq is not prepared to make a gesture of goodwill in the direction of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Sources told Al-Ahram Weekly that the secretary-general of the Arab League, Esmat Abdel-Meguid, received a flat "no" from the Iraqi government to a proposal he made for Baghdad to consider the Kuwaiti complaints about prisoners of war held in Iraq.
Most of the Arab countries are not keen to respond positively to Gaddafi's wish for an Arab challenge of the air embargo imposed on Libya. According to sources, many of these countries would not even consider a request made by the Libyan leadership for a trilateral foreign ministers committee to be formed, to follow up on the Lockerbie issue.
Furthermore, there is not much serious Arab support which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat can depend on if he decides to shrug off the US warning and declare his state on 4 May. In fact, Arafat himself does not appear to be keen to take a step without Washington's blessings.
Given that these differences are caused by narrow national -- as opposed to pan-Arab -- perspectives and interests, there seems little hope that the situation is likely to get any better. To this should be added the continuous foreign attempts to influence the judgement and political decision-making of key Arab states through military and economic promises or threats.
As one source suggested, the recent regional tours made by Cohen and US Under-Secretary of State Martin Indyk are two good examples of the US putting pressure on the decision-makers of Arab countries. And this, at a crucial time when the Arab countries are expected, at least by Arabs, to make decisions on Iraq, the peace process and Libya.
So, when the Arab foreign ministers opened their ordinary session at the headquarters of the Arab League yesterday, none of them went into the meeting with any serious expectations about a breakthrough on any of these issues. As one source said, "The most important thing that Egypt needs to do now is to make sure the very little scope of Arab common ground is not wasted by new disagreements, for example over the issue of the legality of the US-imposed no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq, when it is well-known that the US is sticking to its claim over these zones."
