Shadow of the summit
Ibrahim Nafie reviews the achievements, and likely impact, of Saturday's Arab summit
Perhaps the most important gauge of the success of the Arab summit held in Sharm El-Sheikh was that, in spite of tensions in the lead-up to the summit, it concluded to the general satisfaction of all participants. At one juncture it appeared that certain radical views might so polarise participants as to threaten the summit's collapse. Fortunately, Egypt's political weight and the diplomatic acumen of President Mubarak were instrumental in enabling the participants to overcome such hurdles and then rally towards a consensus. The result was one of the strongest and most coherent closing statements to be produced by an Arab summit in a long time.
Summit participants declared their opposition to a strike against Iraq and stressed the need to resolve the crisis peacefully under the auspices of the UN. Simultaneously, they called upon Iraq to cooperate fully with the international weapons inspectors while stressing that the disarmament of Iraq must be part of a larger process ridding the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction. The statement further succeeded in restoring priority to the Palestinian cause, affirming the need to resume a negotiating process that will lead to the realisation of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
The ordinary Arab summit, brought forward by Egyptian initiative, achieved what was required of it and, in so doing, expressed a level of Arab consensus long absent. It was also heartening to see the language of reason prevail over the bombast that has frequently impeded joint Arab endeavors. Such factors will ensure that the Arab voice will add significant impetus to those forces -- France, Germany, Russia and most of the non-aligned nations, along with the overwhelming tide of global public opinion -- opposed to war.
That voice will also be heard by those advocating disarmament of Iraq by force. Its message is explicit: a war against Iraq will be catastrophic and the chaos it will unleash in this region will ricochet across the world. Consequently, Arab countries will not participate in any attack against Iraq, for the situation today is entirely different to that which prevailed following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
The statement was similarly unequivocal on the need to respect national sovereignty. It read: "The affairs of the Arab world and the development of its political systems are matters to be determined by its peoples without foreign intervention." This message should be sufficient to silence those in the US who advocate toppling the regime in Iraq and installing a new form of government that is ostensibly to serve as a model for other nations in the region.
This is not an issue of "democracy" in its Western formulation but of national sovereignty, autonomy and identity, which the peoples of the region fear are in jeopardy because of statements issuing from the White House suggesting that changing the system in Iraq would only be the prelude to sweeping changes throughout the region.
Another major outcome of the summit was its creation of a mechanism to follow through resolutions. Consisting of representatives of Lebanon, Bahrain and Tunisia -- the former, present and forthcoming holders of the chairmanship of the Arab summit -- and of Egypt, this body will head firstly to the UN to monitor action on the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and the lifting of sanctions. It will then go to Baghdad to insist that it must cooperate "100 per cent", as President Mubarak put it, with the UN weapons inspectors. Finally, it will proceed to Washington where it will inform the administration of the resolutions adopted by the summit and urge it to revise its position in light of international opinion.
Still, the major onus falls on Iraq if Arab efforts to forestall war are to succeed. One event this week precisely illustrates the type of Iraqi behaviour that most guaranteed to undermine such efforts. On Sunday, Baghdad announced that it had "found" 157 tonnes of anthrax and 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve gas. How do you simply find anthrax and VX and in such large quantities? Why did it insist on denying it possessed these substances when it knew Washington had copies of documents certifying their shipment to Iraq?
Iraq's disclosure, coming so late and after such persistent denial, furnishes the US and Britain with more ammunition to assert that Iraq only complies with the weapons inspectors when the pressure is turned up and that the information it does provide represents the tip of the iceberg. No behaviour could be more guaranteed to call into question Iraq's credibility and to assist US and Britain in their campaign for a UN resolution sanctioning the use of force. Would it not have been wiser for Iraq to have come clean at the outset? Then it could have claimed, in good conscience, that it had complied fully with the provisions of international resolutions, brought the issue to a swift close and insisted that now was the time for the UN to lift the sanctions.
We can only hope that Baghdad heeds this lesson. It cannot be stressed enough how little time is left. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix recently announced that he will include in his report to the Security Council on 14 March a commendation for Iraq for its cooperation in destroying its stock of Al Samoud-2 missiles. Baghdad should take this opportunity to furnish any additional information that will ensure that Blix's report is as complete as possible, thereby depriving those campaigning for war from any further pretext to ask the Security Council for a new resolution.
A more general, and heartening, outcome of the recent Arab summit was that it pointed the way to a rational and effective mode of inter-Arab cooperation. Nevertheless, there remains much more that must be done towards this end. As a starting point we should study other successful attempts at regional integration. We could learn much, for example, from the experience of the EU, whose composite nations succeeded in emerging from generations of conflict to arrive at a unified currency, collective political and security structures and the power to impose their views on the US on many vital issues.
Another important step is to take a fresh look at Arab political rhetoric. It would do much to win the respect of the world, and its sympathy for our causes if, for example, we shed the tendency to bombast and hollow sloganeering and adopt a discourse that reflects confidence founded upon a realistic assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses.
There is no doubt that the Arab world needs to undergo a thorough process of reform that combines developing more democratic political systems and freer economic systems within a transparent framework. At the inter-Arab level we should consider proposals to amend the Arab League charter to provide for a decision-making process based on unanimous consensus rather than a majority vote. Such an amendment will help guarantee commitment to the league's resolutions.
Returning to the current situation, we should seriously contemplate Amr Moussa's appeal to keep the current summit in session so that it can meet again to review the progress made by the follow-through mechanism it established and explore any further actions to be taken in light of new developments in Iraq and Palestine.
Simultaneously, we must continue to coordinate with other forces opposed to war. The recent rejection by the Turkish parliament of a government request to approve the deployment of 62,000 American troops and 255 US warplanes in Turkey will undoubtedly add weight to our efforts. But we must also capitalise on all sincere proposals seeking to diffuse the crisis. While I have no desire to engage in the dispute over the initiative proposed by the UAE in the summit, it is still possible to entertain other formulas for diffusing the crisis. Indeed, perhaps Baghdad itself will be the party to step forward with a major initiative that will spare the Iraqi people the tragedy of war and spare the Arab world the dangerous precedent of regime change by coercion.
