September 4, 2002	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Saani25,1423

RIYADH, Sept 3: With the intensification of the diplomatic flurry throughout the Arab world to discuss the available options in case of US military assault on Baghdad, a special session of Arab League Foreign Ministers has also been convened later this week to discuss some of the issues confronting the Arab world.

The foreign ministers’ session later this week would concentrate on the possible US military strikes against Saddam Hussein.

As per indications, the foreign ministers’ moot would focus on threats to the Arab world, including Iraq, the deteriorating conditions in the Palestinian territories and the recent developments in Sudan besides a host of other issues affecting the region.

It has been reported here that Egypt is planning to convene a special tripartite Arab summit to discuss the Iraq issue. According to reports Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria were expected to attend the summit.

Some of the observers have expressed the possibility that the US plans for military intervention in Iraq was part of a larger scheme to balkanize the region, so as to remodel the region, generally perceived within the hawks in the administration as a threat to the US interests.

The Israelis tried in the past to balkanize Lebanon. They failed. Now the United States has turned to other states of the region. One part of the administration was looking to Iraq and Sudan, the Arab League Assistant Secretary General was quoted as saying.

They want to balkanize the region, so as to control it better, he said. It is a strategy which dates back to 1973, with (former Israeli premier) Golda Meir and the (former US Secretary of States) Henry Kissinger.

“Sudan is currently united. Within six years it will be divided. Iraq, then Sudan, then other countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” he added.

After the 1991 Gulf war, the US declared large areas of southern and northern Iraq off limits to Iraqi aircraft to prevents Baghdad from attacking Shia and Kurdish populations.

In Sudan, Washington has given support to peace negotiations between the Khartoum government and the rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which control large parts of the mostly Christian and animist south.

On July 20, the two parties signed a protocol to end the 19- year civil war in Sudan. The deal offers a six-year autonomy period to the south, after which it will decide in a referendum if it wishes to secede.

Egypt and some other regional states have blasted the accord as an announcement on the partition of Sudan.

Egypt’s Wafd newspaper accused the Americans of seeking to “redraw the borders” by intervening in Iraq.

In a news analysis carried in Al-Ahram, the analyst Mahmoud Moawad said Washington sought to carve up Iraq into three parts.

Another analyst believed Bush has a global vision, he is blind to what is regional. September 11 humiliated him, and therefore (he thinks) he should strike at all costs. “It is Pearl Harbour and there must be a Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he feels,” they said.

From King Hamad of Bahrain to Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister and his Syrian counterpart Farouk Al- Shara, every one appears committed to the territorial integrity of Iraq.