End the suspense

The ridiculous cat-and-mouse game over Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction must come to a close. The Iraqi people deserve better.

The Arab world knows that it is the United States and not the United Nations weapons inspectors deployed in Iraq who hold the key to the peace in the region. On Sunday Iraq's deadline to present a full report on its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction will expire. Washington will then either accept or reject the Iraqi report. Next week, then, is a decisive turning point in the war of nerves between Washington and Arab capitals.

A US strike against Iraq will result in far more military and civilian deaths than the 1990-91 Gulf War. In its wake will come health problems and environmental damage with which the Iraqi people will have to contend for generations.

Qualified Arab support for UN-approved US military action, as a means to enforce UN demands that Iraq submit a full account of its weapons of mass destruction and disarm, must not be mistaken for blind Arab support for a forced removal of Saddam Hussein. Public opinion in the Arab world is deeply suspicious of any attempts by Washington to redraw the region's geopolitical map.

A year after the Taliban was routed in Afghanistan the country is embroiled in a vicious circle of violence and abject poverty. Foreign funding for reconstruction and development has not been forthcoming. Some 7,000 US troops remain in the country, along with 5,000 international peacekeepers. Does the future hold the same for Iraq?

The people of Iraq, like those of Afghanistan, have a right to peace. They have a right to live their lives without the continual threat of destruction and death raining down on them from the skies. Let us hope, then, that Washington's war-mongering is an attempt to up the diplomatic pressure on Iraq.

In his on-going re-assessment of the achievements of President Sadat, Ibrahim Nafie focuses on events surrounding the signing of the Camp David accords