KUWAIT, March 18: US plans to punish Iraq have met stiff resistance during Vice President Dick Cheney’s whirlwind tour of the Arab world where Israel’s pounding of the Palestinians is of far greater concern.

Even in Kuwait, eternally grateful to Washington for liberating the emirate from Iraqi occupation in 1991, Cheney had to listen to the reasons against striking Baghdad.

“We will not support this against Iraq, not because Iraq is a friend of Kuwait but because the present circumstances are not suitable,” first deputy premier and foreign minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said.

“The Iraqi regime will not be harmed but the Iraqi people will,” he said as Cheney stood by.

However Sheikh Sabah added: “This is why I hope the Iraqi regime could appreciate what would happen to its people if it refused to let the UN inspectors in.”

The message from the nine Arab states the vice president consulted about what to do with Iraq has been the same.

From Egypt and Jordan to the Gulf monarchies or Yemen, Cheney has been told it is inappropriate to attack Iraq when Israel and the Palestinians are wallowing in blood.

“The Vice President heard the following: America must halt Israeli terrorism and prevent Israel from having arms of mass destruction,” said Al-Watan of Saudi Arabia, the top US ally in the Gulf.

“That is the priority for countries of the region and not a military strike against Iraq,” the daily said.

Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz even publicly stated that US forces would not be allowed to launch attacks on Iraq from its soil.

“For the first time in a long time, America has met with a collective rejection (of its policies) from countries it considers friends,” said Al-Khaleej in the United Arab Emirates.

“This is a new failure for America after the failure with its European allies, most of whom openly rejected the plan to strike Iraq,” the newspaper said.

Cheney, who persuaded Saudi Arabia to host the US-led coalition forces in the 1990-1991 crisis, has spent the trip on the defensive, brushing off “a lot of uninformed speculation”.

“Some people want to believe there is only one issue that I am concerned about or that somehow I am out here to organize a military venture with respect to Iraq. That’s not true,” he said in Bahrain on Sunday night.

“The fact is that we are concerned about Iraq,” Cheney admitted. “We think it is important that we find a way to deal with this emerging threat.”

In Kuwait, he expanded slightly, saying: “We believe Iraq has an obligation to comply with UN resolutions, which they agreed to at the end of the war,” alluding to weapons of mass destruction and the issue of Kuwaitis missing since the 1991 Gulf war.

“The difficulty we’ve all faced in the region is the international community has been consistent in its approach and the problem, the force for instability, the aggression, has consistently been Saddam Hussein,” he said.

“All Iraq has to do is to conform to UN Security Council resolutions and respect its neighbours,” a senior Gulf official told AFP.

Iraq meanwhile has launched its own diplomatic onslaught against Cheney and the threat of military strikes, sending senior leaders scurrying across the region.

Key to the offensive has been the implication that Iraq could finally allow weapons inspectors back in, thereby denying Washington its casus belli.

“Iraq refuses the return of inspectors for as long as the sites for inspection and a precise timetable are not drawn up,” Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.—AFP