Outcome deferred

There are more questions than answers about regional prospects, writes Dina Ezzat

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Morality vs might

Apprehension is looming over the Middle East. Fear is on the rise that the complexity of the political crises the region is suffering from will increase. There are worries that the combination of insensitive and arrogant US foreign policy and Arab political laxity -- some say impotence -- will drive the region deeper into conflict.

"There is a desperate need for an Arab consensus over regional developments," Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Tuesday. Moussa's greatest concern is that in addition to the chronic Arab-Israeli struggle and inter-Arab disputes sectarian-based divisions are now spreading across the region.

Iraq is already swamped and Lebanon is standing on the brink. "We should not sink into the swamp of sectarianism... the regional situation is already far too fragile to accommodate further deterioration," said Moussa.

Tonight Moussa begins receiving Arab foreign ministers arriving to Cairo for the regular two-day ministerial meeting that will open Saturday morning at the headquarters of the Arab League. The agenda of the meeting will cover a wide range of political and socio-economic issues, though Moussa's chief of cabinet Hesham Youssef predicts ministers will be busy with "pressing political concerns: developments in Palestine, the situation in Iraq, Lebanon and Darfur".

Iran, too, remains an issue, though it will be addressed in side-line meetings rather than in the context of the official agenda. Whether Arabs like it or not Tehran is a major player in Arab affairs and Iranian influence on the Shia majority in Iraq is acknowledged even by its worst enemy, Washington. Iran, Arab diplomats admit, can make or break the potential for a stable Iraq. Indeed, Washington on Tuesday announced preparations for a meeting to be held in Baghdad, towards the middle of the month, with the participation of delegations from the US, the UK, Egypt, Iran and other of Iraq's neighbours.

Iran is a strong ally of Syria, a country cold- shouldered by most Arab countries, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran could also help Arab mediation to end the stand-off between the Sunni- led government and Shia opposition in Lebanon. Last but not least Iran could be the target of an American military attack within the coming year or so, as some well-informed analysts have been proposing -- something that would exact an enormous price in terms of regional stability.

Yesterday Iranian President Ahmedinejad arrived in Khartoum for talks with his Sudanese counterpart Omar Al-Bashir, outgoing chair of the Arab summit. The Iranian-Sudanese meeting comes almost on the eve of the Arab summit scheduled to convene in the Saudi capital on 28 March.

"Arabs will support the continuation of diplomatic offices to resolve the crisis" between Tehran and Washington over Iran's nuclear programme, Moussa said this week.

The trouble, though, as several leading commentators argued this week during seminars in Cairo, is that Moussa's statements are not necessarily representative of any collective Arab will, if such a thing exists.

In a revealing lecture, Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh, in Cairo as a guest of the Heikal Foundation for Arab Press, said the Pentagon is already finalising plans to allow the current US administration to attack Iran.

"Plans go for various degrees of bombing; I don't think that [George W Bush] is going to leave office without doing something about Iran," Hersh said on Sunday.

Hersh's assessment was shared by French commentator Eric Rouleau who spoke on Monday at the Egyptian Council on Foreign Relations. "The Americans do not want to negotiate with the Iranians. They are not worried about the Iranian nuclear [programme]. They just want to find pretexts to bomb Iran and [induce] regime change."

Rouleau, like Hersh, expressed concern that despite the negative consequences of such an attack on stability across the region, especially in terms of Shia-Sunni confrontations in many Arab states, Arab capitals are "keeping silent" on the issue.

This week the Israeli media reported that three Arab Gulf countries allied to the US and which share growing concerns over Iran's influence on the Shia segments of their populations have given Tel Aviv permission to use their air space should Israel be delegated by the US to attack Iran. Moussa categorically denies the reports.

Given that Hersh quoted authoritative sources confirming cooperation between Washington and major Arab players, it is possible that the Arab League could find itself face to face with divisions among members along the lines of those that followed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Israeli attack on Lebanon last summer. Increasingly, Arab diplomats admit, such splits are taking on clear sectarian colours. Arab states, furthermore, seem to be increasingly divided into those qualified by the US as moderate and those labeled extremist. Only recently the Israeli Foreign Minister told the Munich Conference on Security Policy that "the confrontation in the Middle East is increasingly becoming one between moderates and extremists rather than Arabs and Israelis".

The annual Arab Strategic Report, produced by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, says it is by dividing the region into moderate versus extremist states that Washington hopes to re-tailor the Middle East in line with its interests and those of Israel.

Meanwhile, hopes to break the stalemate in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation process are dwindling in the face of US reluctance to press Israel into embracing the political flexibility required for the launch of talks on final status issues that cover the borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of East Jerusalem and the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees.

"There is not much to report on the prospects of talks between Palestinians and Israelis yet but we hope that this can still change," commented one Egyptian diplomat who asked for his name to be withheld.

Cairo is hoping that the visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region -- expected in two or three weeks -- might induce some action on the Palestinian-Israeli front. Egypt's security delegation in Gaza is currently working around the clock to finalise a deal whereby the Israeli soldier captured by Palestinians last June is released in return for Palestinian political prisoners. Egyptian officials say that if the deal is concluded before the Rice's arrival it could create a positive momentum.

Egypt is keen to report some progress on this front to the Arab summit. However, as most realistic Egyptian diplomats suggest, there is unlikely to be much in the way of good news between the Arab foreign ministers' meeting this week in Cairo and the convocation of the Arab summit in Riyadh. It is the expected joint convocation of the international Quartet on the Middle East (the US, UN, Russia and EU) with the de facto formulated Arab Quartet of 'moderate' regimes -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates -- in Egypt around mid-April that might allow a deal to be struck on the future of the region.