October 10, 2001	Wednesday	Rajab 22, 1422

DUBAI: The surest way to shatter precarious Arab support for the coalition against terror would be to make US arch-foe Iraq one of its targets, analysts say. An assault would outrage Arabs already angry at Iraqi suffering under sanctions and drive a wedge between pro-Western Gulf Arab governments, scared of being portrayed as accomplices in US bullying, and Washington.

“This would create instability for the whole region,” said Seif Maskari, an Omani and former assistant secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council. “As long as Afghanistan alone is the target you have a sort of consensus,” said a Western diplomat who watches the Gulf. “The moment you widen it, the Saudis will have big problems.”

They may not love him, but Gulf Arab governments are privately aghast at the prospect of a surge of destabilizing unrest likely to follow any attack on President Saddam Hussein.

Sensitivities are at their most acute among Iraq’s immediate Arab neighbours such as Saudi Arabia, already jittery at the consequences for their stability of Muslim deaths from US-led strikes on Afghanistan aimed at hunting down Osama bin Laden.

Many Gulf Arab states are under fire from their citizens for not using economic leverage to press Washington to lift UN sanctions and end years of attacks on Iraq by US and British aircraft enforcing no-fly zones in the north and south.

“Arab public opinion would not accept the widening of attacks to hit any Arab country without providing tangible proof of its involvement (in the Sept 11 attacks,” said Jamal al-Suwaidi of the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research.

“There are already demonstrations in Egypt and elsewhere against the American and British strikes in Afghanistan. It will be even more violent if Iraq is the next step,” said Hussein Amin, a former Egyptian ambassador to Algeria.

There was a surge of concern in the region on Monday when Washington said it might have to target other nations and groups besides Afghanistan and Osama’s Afghan-based Al Qaeda group.

“We may find that our self-defence requires further actions with respect to other organisations and other states,” John Negroponte, US ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in a letter to the Security Council.

Arab commentators and Western diplomats said that governments in the region were taking the prospect seriously because they suspected it was being promoted by top officials such as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.

The diplomats said that the idea of targeting Iraq did not square with the views of their own intelligence on Iraq, nor with those of Israeli military intelligence chief Major-General Amos Malka, who was reported by Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Sept 23 as saying he saw no sign that Iraq was involved in the attacks.

European nations, including staunch US ally Britain, look askance at the prospect of a strike on Iraq, fearing instability in the tightly-controlled Gulf states that are lucrative markets for Western armaments, construction and electronics companies.

Arab analysts hoped US Secretary of State Colin Powell, seen as a relative moderate on Iraq, would quash any such move. “We don’t want Osama to be used a pretext (for an Iraq attack. This is a very serious and dangerous matter,” Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said on arrival in Qatar, adding that Arab foreign ministers would discuss the issue at a meeting in the Gulf state later on Tuesday.

“The more Iraq is targeted for further destruction, the greater the animosity and bitterness in this part of the world against the United States,” said Mohammad al-Sayid Said, deputy director, Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

“Arab rulers, including the Saudis, explained (to Washington) that although they have no passion for Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime, what happened in Iraq has been one of the major roots of the mounting tide of hostility towards the United States in this region. It’s perceived as an overkill tactic and that Iraq has had enough,” he said.

Maskari said that any more US talk about attacking Iraq would convince Arabs that the Sept 11 attacks and subsequent events were part of a conspiracy against the Arab world.

A senior Arab official said that Bush and his aides had assured a number of Arab states, including Egypt and Jordan, that the current military phase would not target any Arab country.

“But in this new post-Sept 11 world one should be cautious and shouldn’t take anything for granted,” he said.—Reuters