THE new buzzword in the Middle East is reform. The Palestinian Authority and Palestinian leadership have to reform. This is the call coming from three different quarters — Israeli, American, and Palestinian. But the motives of these various groups — and hence the kind of reform they are seeking — differ.

The main charges against Arafat and his colleagues in the Palestinian Authority are corruption and dictatorship. These charges have substantive foundations. Since its inception in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has lived up to the stereotypical despotic and self-serving image of Arab regimes. Presidential elections have been held only once, in 1995. Local council elections have not been held since 1996.

Financial authority was concentrated in Yasser Arafat’s hands, together with the interior ministry portfolio and numerous other powers. A judiciary law that would have separated the powers of the legislature, judiciary and executive was never endorsed. The Palestinian Constitution, approved by the Palestinian Legislative Authority in 1997, sat on Arafat’s desk awaiting his signature for five years.

While Yasser Arafat himself had a spartan lifestyle, others did not. Loyalists were rewarded with positions in the bloated Palestinian cabinet and allowed to prosper from them. Opponents and challengers were systematically sidelined. In a classic exercise in “divide and rule”, the Palestinian leader split the security forces under thirteen commanders.

The end result of all the above was absolute power for Yasser Arafat. But it was also an Authority riddled by cronyism and corruption, unable to deliver benefits to its people. It also served to encourage radical Islamist groups by people disillusioned with the PA’s secular leadership. That led to suicide attacks, Israeli and American criticism of the PA for its failure to curb Palestinian militants, and eventually to the recent brutal reoccupation by Israel of towns and villages in the West Bank.

Thanks to its endemic weaknesses the PA was totally helpless in the face of that reoccupation. It could not even muster effective spokespersons to highlight Israeli atrocities and counter deadly Israeli propaganda. Accepting the exile of 13 Palestinians in exchange for Arafat’s liberation from his Ramallah compound was the final humiliating capitulation. The need for reform of the Palestinian leadership is clear. Nonetheless Ariel Sharon’s address to the Israeli Knesset on May 14, in which he declared “there can be no peace with a corrupt terror regime which is rotten and dictatorial ... there has to be a different PA”, takes the biscuit. For a man who has never had any compunctions about violating all manner of rights of the Palestinian people — land, property, lives — to complain when they are denied democracy and honest government is hypocritical in the extreme. Arafat has not been a good leader to the Palestinians, but the suffering he has caused them is infinitely less than that imposed by Sharon.

What is the real reason for Sharon’s new-found “concern” for the Palestinian people? In part, insisting on a reformed PA before peace talks is the same strategy as insisting on seven days without any violence: set impossible conditions for peace talks so that these can never take place. Ariel Sharon has nothing to offer at the negotiating table — he would barely tolerate Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, let alone a Palestinian state — and therefore he keeps as far away from it as he can.

But Sharon also has a deep hatred of Yasser Arafat. No doubt his past failure to get rid of Arafat in the 1982 siege of Beirut was a factor in this. The Israeli prime minister barely managed to contain himself from ordering his forces to kill the Palestinian leader in Ramallah. He has indicated that he would happily send him into exile. Sharon wants Arafat replaced with an even more pliant and accommodating Palestinian chief — one willing to accept peace on Sharon’s terms and to complete the task started by Arafat in the mid-90s of neutralizing the Islamist forces. Beyond that, the Israeli prime minister could not care less how the Palestinians are governed.

So much for Tel Aviv’s calls for reforms. What of the Americans? Last week, George Bush was again pressing the Palestinian leadership to establish institutions. But the Palestinian Authority has been corrupt and undemocratic from day one. In the past, the Americans never had a problem dealing with it. What has changed now is the greatly heightened level of Palestinian desperation, i.e. suicide bombing. The Americans want to see an end to it and an overall reduction in Middle East violence, so that they can put the Israel-Palestine problem back into cold storage. Bush has no wish to become a Middle East peacemaker, but while the violence in the region remains so intense he cannot turn his back on it either.

The American focus in Palestinian reform is therefore on security. They want the “divide and rule” security apparatus established by Arafat replaced with a single unified and hence — they hope — more effective structure. If the Palestinian Authority can clamp down on the suicide bombers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Bush can happily walk away from the Middle East. So long as Arafat can deliver this, the Americans will not endorse Israeli demands for his ouster. Nor will they be overly bothered about how he runs his administration.

Turning to the Palestinians, the people have to be considered separately from the leadership. The latter, especially Arafat, are the most reluctant advocates of reform. He personally has very little to gain (except perhaps US approval) and much to lose (control of the finances and security of the PA, the absolute authority he has enjoyed since 1994, possibly even his presidency) from reform. Such is the international and domestic pressure on him, though, that he has to at least give the impression of change.

Arafat has just trimmed his cabinet from 31 to 21 ministers and, for the first time ever, appointed an interior minister. Security restructuring is on the cards, and parliamentary, local and presidential elections have been promised by the new year. But the condition that Israeli forces first withdraw to their pre-intifada lines — generally seen as impossible — suggests that Arafat is hoping to get away with cosmetic changes.

For ordinary Palestinians, the most long-standing and least heeded advocates of reform, democracy is far more important than security restructuring or even rooting out corruption. Arafat has lost the confidence of his people. His flagging popularity briefly revived while he withstood the Israeli siege of his compound, but the deal he did to secure his own release — one that sent 13 Palestinians into exile — wiped it out completely.

The Palestinians want a new leader. Not to make compromises with the Israelis or to clamp down on the suicide bombers, but to lead the intifada. According to one Palestinian commentator, “There is an all but universal belief that the absence of structural transformations is intimately related to Israel’s political and military victories.”

A regime that prioritizes its own perpetuation in power cannot lead an effective nationalist movement. Arafat’s obsession with personal control has weakened the intifada. His people realize this; they want him to go; and they want free and fair elections to achieve this.

Whose reform agenda is implemented will determine to a large extent the future of the Middle East conflict. It will not, however, bring peace. For that the Israelis, too, have to reform.

THE participation of sixteen Asian states in the Almaty security and confidence-building summit in the first week of June shows their common desire to work towards a climate of detente, security and peace in this embattled continent.

Most gratifying to note was the presence of certain states having adversarial relations such as India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine and Iran and Azerbaijan. Other participants were China, Russia, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Egypt and Mongolia. The conference approved a 35-point draft known as the Almaty Declaration that envisages an elaborate structure of security and co-operation parallel to Helsinki Act adapted to the contemporary conditions in Asia.

What must have added a sense of urgency to the Russian President’s initiative in convening the conference was the looming threat of nuclear war in South Asia which may affect the adjoining South-west and Central Asia. That ten states, including the US, Japan and Australia, attended the meeting as observers added to the significance of the decisions made at Almaty. It has worldwide support.

The Almaty moot evolved from Soviet leader Brezhnev’s 1969 Asian Security Plan and its modified version presented by Gorbachev in 1986. The Brezhnev plan could not find favour with Pakistan because of its anti-Chinese slant. It sought to exclude China, the largest Asian state, and bolster India in order to influence the non-aligned nations.

It met with formidable opposition from the US which saw in Moscow’s Asian Security Plan a Trojan horse to infiltrate into the newly-independent Afro-Asian states. Indira Gandhi despite her warm relationship with Brezhnev, adopted a lukewarm and non-committal approach to the plan lest it strained New Delhi’s none-too-friendly relations with Washington.

The plan was revived by Gorbachev who had removed its anti-Chinese features in order to make it palatable to Beijing with which he was engaged in resolving the territorial dispute along the 4,500-mile common border. The Soviet Asian Security Plan stressed the inviolability of sovereignty, territorial integrity of all states in Asia, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs and peaceful coexistence among states with differing political, social and economic systems.

In those days human rights and fundamental freedoms were not much in fashion in Asian countries many of which were under absolute monarchies and fascist regimes.

It was different in Western Europe where liberal and social democratic ideas were not only ascendant but were making deep inroads into the communist east across the Berlin Wall. Like in the present-day Asia, there was a nuclear stand-off between the Nato and Warsaw Pact in the sixties and seventies. But fortunately for Europe, the nuclear confrontation did not lead to a holocaust; on the other hand, it gave an impetus to both power blocs to promote detente. The protracted dialogue between the two starting in the 1960s culminated in the Helsinki Act in 1975.

A comprehensive treaty, the Helsinki Act, covered a broad spectrum ranging from political, military, security, disarmament, non-intervention and non-interference in the internal affairs of member states to trade, economic co-operation, health, education, culture, scientific and technological exchanges, sports, Olympiad, etc. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and social security were also guaranteed by the signatories.

Today the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe is a dynamic force in strengthening peace and security by promoting multiple links among the member countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin expanded the Shanghai Five into a six- member organization aimed at combating cross-border terrorism and expanding many-sided cooperation among the members. Now the Shanghai Security and Cooperation Organization has been enlarged with the inclusion of sixteen members and renamed Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia.

It is a byproduct of the post-September 11 period whose dominant theme is the continuation of war against religious militancy, separatist insurgency, cross-border incursions by armed groups operating from an adjacent country and possibly enjoying its clandestine support in arms, money and protection. This has been repeatedly described as terrorism.

Though the Almaty Declaration condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and enjoins upon the signatory powers do take collective preventive and punitive action against this menace, it never for once mentions state terrorism as manifest in routine killings of innocent civilians and destruction of property by the Indian and Israeli armies in occupied Kashmir and Palestine and their defiance of calls for withdrawal by the Security Council.

To many, state terrorism is a more heinous crime than individual or group terrorism. The verdict of the Nuremburg tribunal and the on-going trial of Milosevic by the International Criminal Court for Yugoslavia in The Hague proves the point.

The Almaty Declaration recognizes the right of a people living under foreign rule to self-determination but does not provide any mechanism for its realization. If the occupying power does not grant independence to the people of the illegally held territory and suppresses them by brute force, would the victims of oppression be dubbed terrorists if they resort to armed resistance?

The test of the Almaty Declaration lies in whether the CICA treats Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine, Golan Heights and Sheba Farms as foreign occupied territories or not? If it does not, what worth is it in the eyes of the affected people? In fact the right to self-determination is qualified by the Almaty moot’s opposition to separatist movements.

This will serve New Delhi’s interest if the Declaration treats Kashmir as an integral part of India which may ask CICA to take action against those actively resisting Indian rule and want to join Pakistan or to become independent. Islamabad would dispute the Indian claim but it is not certain that the Almaty members would agree with its contention. This part of the Declaration may be variously interpreted by the signatories like bilateralism in the Simla Accord.

The Declaration condemns religious extremism but is silent on the persecution and massacre of religious minorities by certain governments as illustrated by the Gujarat carnage in India. It should condemn both.

CICA’s denunciation of resort to force for the resolution of disputes and its exhortation for negotiated settlement by the parties concerned is in fact an implicit indictment of Vajpayee’s negative stance vis-a-vis Pakistan.

The Almaty Declaration’s provisions regarding disarmament and the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone are nothing new.

They are mere repetition of the UN General Assembly resolutions. The Almaty participants should have called for the conclusion of bilateral or multilateral no-war pacts by certain member states.

That might have led to the de-escalation of tension between India and Pakistan now locked up in a dangerous military confrontation along their common border.