31 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2002 Issue No. 610 Editorial	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Standing idly

The on-going debate within the UN Security Council over whether or not Iraq will be subjected to a military strike should provoke Arab countries to put aside all differences and worry about whatever plans are being made for them in the post-war scenario. Instead they are comfortably taking the spectators' bench.

It is not good enough for Arab foreign ministries to praise France for threatening to veto any potential US resolution that attempts to authorise the use of force against Iraq. Nor is it enough for Arab foreign ministers -- or actually some of them -- to issue occasional warnings of the grave consequences that any attack will necessarily have on the region, and on Anglo-American interests within it.

True, some Arab governments, together with the Arab League, have had consultations over the expected new UN resolution on Iraq with the members of the Security Council. Syria, currently the only Arab member of the Security Council, is opposing the war arguments made by the US. And it may well be true that Arab foreign ministries are aware that the US has not yet been able to secure the nine votes necessary to pass its war-oriented resolution on Iraq should it reach an agreement with Paris that would result in the withholding of the French veto.

Still, the time has come when Arab states must articulate a coherent, collective opposition against war. The Beirut summit resolution opposing war against Iraq, signed by the 22 Arab League member states, is not worth the paper on which it is written when Iraq's Arab neighbours are reportedly lining up to offer the US military and other facilities to attack Iraq.

Arab regimes have every right to take exception to the political and human rights record of the current Iraqi regime. But they have no right to disappoint their populations. And the Arab street is becoming increasingly frustrated as it watches others making plans for the future of the Arab world while Arab governments stand idly by.

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