MIDDLE EAST: Positions adopted on Iraq are not all they seem on the surface, reports Patrick Smyth.
In the hall of mirrors that is Middle East politics, working out precisely where some countries stand on US ambitions in Iraq is difficult. But there are signs that, as American officials insist, some may be attempting to accommodate themselves to what they regard as the inevitable.
The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi suspects that Egypt and Syria are the latest Arab states to begin acquiescing tacitly to US plans. The joint statement issued after talks in Cairo on Monday between Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Bashar Assad, it says, consisted "of ambiguous phrases into which one cannot read any stance, be it for or against Iraq, or in favour or against the US."
"It may not be far off the mark to conclude that the last sentence, referring to arms inspections under a Security Council mandate, constitutes implicit agreement to the issuing of a new resolution, which France, Russia and China have all opposed," Al-Quds al-Arabi says.
Writing from Damascus in Beirut's Daily Star on Thursday, journalist Ibrahim Hamidi argues that a whole range of subtle signals suggest that a thaw in the chilly relations between Syria, denounced by President Bush in June as a supporter of terrorism, and the US is under way. Indeed, the two may have "struck a deal".
Most notably, he says, the Bush administration has done a U-turn on the Syria Accountability Act, a measure aimed at tightening sanctions against Damascus and whose passage through Congress it is now obstructing.
Hamidi believes Syria may rationalise its insistence on Iraq's adherence to Security Council resolutions in terms of its own long-term demand that Israel implement Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and return the Golan Heights. But Damascus will do what it can, he writes, to minimise Iraqi casualties and prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state in the north.
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MEANWHILE Turkey's prime minister has issued a warning to Iraqi Kurdish groups who last week approved a constitution that envisions replacing the dictatorship of President Saddam Hussein with a "federal Iraq". The prospect deeply alarms Turkish leaders.
"Even though they say, 'We are against founding a Kurdish state,' a de facto state is already on the way to being formed," Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit complained hours after the draft constitution was approved. "If this becomes official, there will be serious problems."
Such fears are reflected in the talks the Turks have been having with the US on the price of their support as a staging/logistical post for an Iraq operation. Reports in the Middle East suggest that, in exchange, the US would provide Turkey with strategic, economic and political assistance. In particular, Washington would block the emergence of an independent or semi-independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Washington, it is reported, has also offered to occupy the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul to prevent them falling to Iraqi Kurds. According to our correspondent Michael Jansen, "although Ankara would like to claim Kirkuk and its oil fields on the pretext of protecting the Turkoman minority, they know that this would antagonise the Kurds, the Arab world, and Iran".
And Turkey would expect up to $10 billion compensation from the US for the loss of revenue associated with the pipeline which carries Iraqi oil across Turkish territory, although memories of the $1 billion a year in aid promised for its support in the Gulf War which never materialised still rankle.
The ripple effect of the Iraq crisis is also being felt, Cyprus sources say, in a hardening of the Turkish stance in the Cyprus peace talks and in their insistence on a firm date from the EU for the start of accession talks. Confident that the US will not want to put serious pressure on Ankara at this time, Turkish negotiators are reported to be digging in on their demands for international recognition of the illegal state of Northern Cyprus and for a two-state solution to the island's conflict.
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Two short historical footnotes:
Writing in the Jordan Times on Thursday, George Hismeh recalls how a previous US government, that of Ronald Reagan no less, responded to the sort of pre-emptive strategy now being contemplated by Mr Bush.
In June 1981, American-supplied Israeli warplanes launched a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, demolishing its French-supplied nuclear reactor, Tammuz 1, or Osirak, on the pretext that Iraq was developing a nuclear bomb which it could use against Israel. Asked if the evidence supported Menachim Begin's assertion that the reactor was designed to produce atomic bombs, US Undersecretary of State, Mr Walter Stoessel, replied: "We would not agree."
The UN Security Council responded with a unanimous motion - the US included - "strongly condemning" what it described as a "clear violation of the United Nations Charter and the norms of international conduct."
It remains one of the most severe reproaches to Israel that the US has yet endorsed at the UN.
Meanwhile, testifying in Congress this week, the Clinton Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, drew attention to comments of a distinguished former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson. In the early years of the Cold War he had written of the necessity to "overdramatise a threat in order to arouse public support".