Arab leaders question U.S. policy in Middle East

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Chicago Tribune

By Cam Simpson

RABAT, Morocco _ A high-profile effort by the Bush administration to spark reform across the Middle East was greeted with skepticism here Saturday as Arab leaders, including close U.S. allies, questioned American policies and said little movement would be possible without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yet departing Secretary of State Colin Powell declared Saturday's gathering of representatives from 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well those from the world's biggest industrialized powers, a historic event. Before arriving, Powell had said just getting the disparate group of leaders at the same table would be a victory, apparently a far cry from the ambitious vision for remaking the region unveiled by President Bush more than a year ago.

But concerns about U.S. support for Israel and stagnation in the peace process seemed to overshadow American reform efforts at the one-day conference, called Forum for the Future. And the administration already had recalibrated its ambitions by focusing largely on economic and social development, as opposed to sweeping democratic initiatives.

"Let us face it," Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, told Powell and the other delegates. "Our differences are neither religious nor cultural. ... The real bone of contention is the longest conflict in modern history. For too long the Arabs have witnessed the Western bias towards Israel."

After saying Arabs understood why Americans guaranteed Israel's security, Saud said: "But what the Arab peoples cannot fathom is why these guarantees are transformed into unrestricted backing of unrestrained Israeli policies (that are) contrary to international legality."

And he said, "the beast of extremism, terrorism and hatred remains with us because we are not true to our commitments."

His words were perhaps the sharpest of those delivered to Powell, but the Saudis were not alone. Virtually every Arab delegate who spoke _ and even some from the West _ raised the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Some also questioned continuing violence in Iraq and the apparently slow pace of implementing economic incentives promised this summer by the Americans as part of the reform effort.

It was not clear whether most of the statements were meant to be public or were more candid than usual because delegates had believed their main session would be closed. State Department officials had said the session would not be open, though the Moroccan government, which was co-host of the event, broadcast most, but not all, of the delegates' statements to journalists gathered in a nearby room.

Ahmed Abu Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, told delegates that "the continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the stagnation of the peace process and the stagnation of the implementation of the road map," were lurking behind continued instability and insecurity in the region.

Hassouna al-Shawish, the Libyan deputy foreign minister, also expressed concerns about the Palestinians, and said, "Continued bloodshed makes it difficult for us all. I'm talking about bloodshed in Iraq."

Ahead of the conference, one local newspaper here published a cartoon depicting an American soldier pointing his rifle at a defenseless Arab while quoting Powell about the need for reform.

Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, predicted it would take time and patience to modernize the region, calling the gathering the "first chapter of what we regard as a generational task."

But he also said the effort "must include resolving the region's conflicts," adding later, "Progress in the Middle East (peace) process will lend all reform and modernization efforts in the Arab world unprecedented momentum."

Just before arriving in Rabat late Friday, Powell had dismissed the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian situation should get in the way of Saturday's agenda. "The basic question is: Can there be progress on reform as long as the Middle East peace process is not moving as people would like to see? The answer is, of course there could be," Powell told reporters traveling with him aboard his plane.

"We can't keep pointing to the Middle East peace process as the reason we don't undertake reform efforts that are needed by these nations, and as these nations have identified for themselves," Powell said.

Indeed, some of the officials who spoke Saturday, including the Saudis, represent regimes consistently rated among the most repressive in the world. And some Arab governments have long used questions about the Palestinians as a shield against reform.

But after Saturday's session, even Powell said at a news conference he could not "overlook some of the challenges we are all facing in the region, and uppermost in that list of challenges is the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

An official statement issued after the conference said the participants "reaffirmed that their support for reform in the region will go hand in hand with their support for a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict."

The conference came after months of rancor. A leak earlier this year of a Bush administration draft about the so-called Greater Middle East initiative was widely condemned by Arab nations that believed the United States was preaching democratic reforms while occupying Iraq with more than 130,000 troops.

Although officials acknowledge they have not always handled the issue smoothly, the U.S. concerns are real. Repression can feed radicalism, they say. And much of the region faces a demographic recipe for ongoing discontent, with a bulging youth population facing rising unemployment. The World Bank says massive economic development programs are needed just to maintain the status quo.

The reform balance also is delicate. The United States remains widely unpopular as it seeks to empower the very citizens who now despise it. The reforms it seeks are aimed at limiting the powers of the very governments needed to enact change. And the best-organized opposition to the region's most repressive regimes is often found within the ranks of the Islamic political movements the United States has grown to fear.

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(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune.