| |
THE ROVING EYE
Three meetings and a
funeral
By Pepe Escobar
CAIRO - The diplomatic endgame starts now. This
is the ultimate question: How long is the US willing to
wait after Hans Blix's crucial January 27 report to the
Security Council? Washington's verdict seems to be
final: Saddam Hussein is guilty until pronounced guilty.
A few days ago, American officials were talking about
the wait in terms of "weeks", not months. Now there's
every indication that they will be talking about a few
"days", not weeks. The war against Iraq can be launched
any time between mid and late February. But there are
deep fears in the Arab world that it could be launched
as early as the day after the so-called war council
between George W Bush and Tony Blair on Friday, January
31.
According to a member of a humanitarian
mission now inside Iraq, the local authorities seem to
be cooperating and providing the UN inspectors with
unrestricted access to places and people. But the key
problem remains that all the protagonists in the whole
mechanism - the inspectors on the ground in Iraq and
their supervisors in New York and Vienna - are under
tremendous, relentless pressure from Washington to come
up with the smoking or non-smoking gun proving Iraq is
in "material breach" of Resolution 1441. There are
echoes filtering to Cairo of some dejected weapons
inspectors overdosing on their bottles of arak: they
seem to be convinced that their arduous job will amount
to nothing anyway because Washington and London have
already chosen to go to war - regardless of what the UN
is doing.
Hans Blix himself, in a splendid
Freudian slip, admitted on camera that things would be
so much easier "if Iraq provided the evidence that is
needed". Kafka wouldn't script it better: as the rope
for Saddam's hanging has not been provided by his
minions, it is practically certain that on Monday Hans
Blix will issue a sort of terse ultimatum (not black and
white, but "grey", according to the Iraqi authorities)
which may (or may not) win the inspectors a little more
time - if Washington so decides. The whole world,
meanwhile, continues to ask: what is the purpose of
Resolution 1441? To disarm Iraq or to finish off Saddam
Hussein? For Security Council members France, Russia and
China, for Germany (next month's president of the
council), for the Arab world, and for the majority of
public opinion everywhere, it is to disarm Iraq.
At this crucial juncture, we must take into
consideration two extremely significant meetings that
just took place this week: one in Versailles, and the
other in Istanbul.
The extremely cordial
get-together between French President Jacques Chirac and
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Versailles - and
a day later in Berlin, as part of the 40th anniversary
of the Elysee Treaty solidifying Franco-German peace -
may and will have enormous ramifications. It could mean
the real engine of Europe now thinks and acts
independently from the US. And it could demonstrate what
in fact is the practical irrelevance of NATO.
Conservative, scandal-tainted Chirac and social democrat
Schroeder took at least four years to find a common
ground and a smooth modus operandi. Washington hawks'
obsession with Iraq finally did the trick for them.
France - with veto power - presides over the UN
Security Council in January. Germany takes over the
presidency in February. As Chirac stressed, both
governments are in a 24-hour-a-day consultation mode at
the UN. The message once again was clear: the UN
inspectors must be given time. France hinted that it
would veto any new US-sponsored UN resolution
authorizing the launching of a war against Iraq. Germany
reaffirmed it would also vote against it - although with
no veto power. Russia and China - both with veto power -
a day later stressed that the only solution is
non-military, and through the UN. The stage was then set
for a titanic diplomatic battle against the
Anglo-American axis. Britain - via Jack Straw - admitted
it was ready for war without a new resolution. Colin
Powell formally sounded the death knell of the
inspections. Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's number two,
went ballistic once again trying to sell the linkage
between Iraq and the war against terror.
European diplomats - and the European street -
dismissed Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld's growls
about "old Europe" as rubbish, more of the same "if
you're not with us, you're against us". German Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer told the Americans to cool down
almost in a playful tone. Privately, Rumsfeld is
regarded in Brussels - Europe's political capital - and
Geneva - the key diplomatic and international
organizations' capital - as an arrogant bully pregnant
with political and historical ignorance. In the words of
a European diplomat, "Civil society everywhere refuses
to live in an intolerant world scripted by Donald
Rumsfeld and his minions."
And what an irony
that this whole rhetorical shootout took place as the
World Economic Forum started rolling in snowy Davos,
Switzerland, simultaneously with the World Social Forum
rolling in sunny Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. More
than 2,000 international VIPs are in Davos engaging in
gloomy debates around the theme "Building Trust" -
protected by the largest security apparatus ever
deployed in Switzerland. At the same time, in the
southern Atlantic, more than 100,000 delegates are
gathering in Porto Alegre to engage in lively debates
around the theme "another world is possible". While in
Davos everything centers on the dark prospects for the
global economy and the inevitable depressing fallout of
a war in Iraq, Porto Alegre started with a cheerful
demonstration against the war itself.
The
meeting in Istanbul between the foreign ministers of
Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan also
spoke volumes - in this case about the convulsions in
the Arab and Muslim world. Egyptian Foreign Minister
Ahmed Maher had said that the Arab states have a crucial
three-point common agenda for the next few weeks:
"First, to urge Iraq to fully cooperate with the weapons
inspectors; second, to call on the inspectors to carry
out their job objectively and avoid any provocative
actions; third, to press on the international community
that any action should be within the framework of the UN
Security Council and according to international
legitimacy."
Egypt and Saudi Arabia at first had
high hopes for the Istanbul meeting. But in the end the
meeting was downgraded from the level of heads of state
to foreign ministers. On January 18, Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak made un unannounced visit to Libya for
talks with Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi, always a wily
operator, told Mubarak that the Istanbul meeting would
be useless if it did not convince Bush to back down from
attacking Iraq: "What are they going to demand from him
[Saddam]? Suicide?"
Saddam may be keeping the
last bullet in his gun to himself - as his former press
secretary, self-exiled in Europe since 1991, told the
Egyptian press. As to the ministers in Istanbul, as
expected, they did not formally try to persuade Saddam
to choose exile - although all sorts of permutations
were discussed on the sidelines. The final Istanbul
declaration instead called the Iraqi leadership to
"assume their responsibilities", and supports the
"territorial integrity" of Iraq.
Considering
that Iraq is an Arab country, and an imposed regime
change on Iraq will have tremendous consequences for all
Arab states, numerous Arab intellectuals and politicians
are puzzled that Turkey - and not any of the leading
Arab states - took the initiative of the Istanbul
meeting. And especially considering the fact that Turkey
is a key NATO member which in this very week sort of
gave the go-ahead for a massive deployment of US troops
in its soil. The feeling in Cairo is of extreme outrage:
Arab countries, which used to coordinate policies on
every imaginable issue, had to be invited by Turkey to
discuss nothing less than the future of the Middle East.
And on top of that, Turkey has a military alliance with
Israel.
Once again the Arab League was proved to
be totally irrelevant. Why? Because America vetoed it.
Turkey and Iran wanted to invite the Arab League's
secretary general Amir Moussa to the meeting. After all,
Moussa has been constantly talking to Iraq, and the Arab
League formally stated at the Beirut summit in March
2002 that an attack on Iraq would be considered an
attack on all Arabs. But not only Washington has no time
for the Arab League; other Arab states in the meeting
bombarded the Arab League participation. They were
worried that with the inclusion of the secretary
general, other states would also want to take part. In
the end, an Arab state, Syria, was promised that the
next meeting of this group of six - if and when it ever
happens, at the desperate 11th hour, and maybe involving
the heads of state themselves - will be held in
Damascus.
Asia Times Online has also learned
that the Istanbul meeting was closely coordinated
between Ankara and Washington. This really means that
the final declaration was in fact approved in advance by
the US. It's not a coincidence that as soon as the
meeting was set, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld
started dangling the carrot of exile to Saddam Hussein.
The Istanbul declaration was so bland because it
inevitably reflected the complex composition of the
meeting. Turkey and Jordan are staunch US allies. Egypt
is a US ally viewed with increasing suspicion in
Washington because of the enormous anti-American foreign
policy sentiment in the country. Saudi Arabia is now
regarded as close to the devil by Washington hawks. Iran
is a certified member of the axis of evil, and Syria is
a serious candidate. These six countries have only one
thing in common: they all have an infinite lot to lose -
in political, economic and humanitarian terms - from a
war against Iraq.
There is nothing in the
Istanbul declaration that the UN may take to Baghdad and
so encourage Saddam to reform his regime. The Istanbul
six are asking for cooperation - but Baghdad says that
it is already cooperating. So the whole spectacle
amounted once more to a display of Arab impotence. As
much as Arab states alone cannot convince the US to pull
back, it's unlikely this official regional anti-war
sentiment will swing Washington's mood. For commentators
and academics all over the Arab world, it was nothing
more than a face-saving operation by these states toward
their own, exasperated, anti-war public opinions.
Egyptian historian Tarek El-Bishri is adamant:
"What is happening today is much worse than the Baghdad
Pact." El-Bishri stresses, "Iraq is the strategic
frontier of the Arab region and the Levant. Generally,
it is the gateway to the Arab world." Because Iraq's
strategic security is so crucial to Egypt,
then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser was totally opposed to
the 1955 Baghdad Pact. This was a treaty concocted by
the US and NATO to contain the former Soviet Union.
According to the pact, British and American troops would
be permanently stationed in a cluster of military bases
around Iraq. Nasser mobilized the "Arab masses" and
campaigned tirelessly against it. The pact collapsed.
But now many in Egypt consider that there is a
sort of replay of direct military occupation, similar to
what happened under the British and the French in the
19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
El-Bishri notes that "Iraq has been subject to military
strikes over the past 10 years, and they have not
stopped". His analysis echoes the pervasive Arab opinion
on what's really going on: the US "is here to occupy not
only Iraq, but the region. The Gulf is under full
military occupation. We are not waiting for a war,
because it has started already."
(©2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies,
or to submit a letter to the editor.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
