CAIRO: Arab governments aligned with Washington fear a US military strike against Iraq will unleash a wave of protests and violence that could jeopardise their own power.

In this context, say western observers in the region, the so- called moderate Arab leaders plan to make a last minute plea to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to avoid a war by going into exile.

Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis recently explained in a TV interview that if Saddam Hussein was to go into exile there was a chance that the conflict between the US and Iraq could be resolved peacefully. “There are Arab states who have shown their support for this scenario,” he stressed.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday that Turkey, along with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, plan to make an impassioned plea, on the eve of a possible war, for Saddam to bow out and take refuge abroad.

While the Iraqi opposition and the US government are already discussing which of Baghdad’s leading political personalities, apart from Saddam, should be charged with war crimes, the Arab opponents of military action see this appeal to Saddam as a last chance for a peaceful resolution.

In the past month rumours have been circulating that Saddam’s future lies in exile, possible in either Libya, Egypt, Russia or Mauritania.

But in Baghdad hardly anyone believes that their leader will listen to the advice of his fellow Arab leaders and spare his people a new war.

Members of Iraq’s ruling Baath Party also rule out Saddam’s exile because their fate is so closely linked with his.

Kanaan Makiya, a member of the opposition in exile, calls this a system of fear. Saddam has ensured lifelong loyalty from his followers with the fear that he could name them as accomplices in his dictatorship, said Makiya.

Apart from Kuwait, which refuses to forgive Baghdad for its 1990 invasion of the country, no other Arab state, so far, has supported a US-led attack on Iraq.

They consider a war on a country with such economic and geostrategic importance as Iraq to be far more dangerous than the threat of any weapons of mass destruction Iraq may have hidden.

“If the U.S destroys Iraq’s armed forces and infrastructure with its high-tech weapons it will upset the balance of power in the region from which only Iran, an enemy of the US and Israel, exactly like Saddam Hussein, will profit,” warned the Egyptian newspaper Al- Gomhouriya, in its Saturday edition.

Other Arab observers reported that Israel has secret plans to use the chaos of an Iraqi war to force large numbers of Palestinians out of the West Bank into Jordan.

Turkish Prime Minister Abudullah Gul said on Saturday on a visit to Damascus that military intervention in Iraq could lead to a civil war in the country which might ultimately involve other countries in the region.

Arab opinion is united on one front: that the Arab people do not want an Iraqi-US war and that after years of high sacrifices brought on by US sanctions there is little love lost for the US

However, there is one fact that no side has yet voiced aloud, that pro-western Arab leaders could face the collective wrath of their own people.—dpa