Arab states united in rejecting attack on Saddam
By Robert Fisk in Beirut
18 March 2002

 

   Rarely can an American vice-president have met such a rebuff from
   America's Arab allies. Not a single Arab king, prince or president has
   been prepared to endorse a US attack on Iraq.

   Even in Kuwait - where Dick Cheney arrives today before going on to
   Israel - an opinion poll suggests that more than 40 per cent of its
   citizens are hostile to Washington's policies.

   In every Arab capital, Mr Cheney has been politely but firmly told to
   turn his attention to the Palestinian-Israeli war, and forget the
   "axis of evil'' until the US brings its Israeli allies into line. All
   Mr Cheney's efforts to pretend that the conflict in the West Bank,
   Gaza and Israel is separate from Iraq - or "two tracks" as the
   American cliché would have it - have failed.

   Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's First Deputy Prime Minister, met
   Mr Cheney at the end of a long red carpet at Jeddah airport, but the
   Saudi press were not so polite. One newspaper carried a front-page
   article condemning US policy in the region - almost unheard of in the
   kingdom - while editorials in other Gulf papers uniformly condemned
   any assault on Iraq. Prince Abdullah has gone out of his way to
   explain to US television audiences why he opposes military action
   against the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, while Prince Saud
   al-Faisal, the Foreign Minister, has told the Americans that they
   cannot use the Prince Sultan air base for any war against Baghdad.

   Repeatedly, Arab leaders have turned Mr Cheney's arguments about
   America's "war on terrorism'' around. For them, the terror is being
   inflicted upon Palestinians by Israelis. If President Saddam is
   overthrown, Iraq could break apart, the US Vice-President was told
   several times, with incalculable effects on Iraq's Muslim neighbours.

   Even the small United Arab Emirates had no time for the Cheney
   argument. The Vice-President's spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise, said
   that Mr Cheney "made the point that al-Qa'ida can't be allowed to
   reconstitute'' in the Middle East. The government of the UAE
   President, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, retorted briskly that
   he was opposed to military action in Iraq.

   The Arabs might be forgiven their confusion over Mr Cheney's
   objectives. If America wishes to pursue its "war on terror'', what has
   Iraq got to do with it? Where is the evidence that Saddam was involved
   in 11 September? None exists, so Mr Cheney has invented a new dogma
   for Arabs: "The United States will not permit the forces of terror to
   gain the tools of genocide'' he said. President Saddam has "weapons of
   mass destruction'' and they could fall into the hands of Osama bin
   Laden.

   Since Mr bin Laden hates President Saddam and has gone on record to
   say as much, just how the Iraqi weapons, if they exist, would reach
   America's nemesis is unclear. And the Arabs have been asking who is
   threatening genocide in the Middle East? Who is being attacked?

   The one Middle East nation that supports a strike at Iraq is Israel,
   where Mr Cheney is expected to arrive later today. The Vice-President
   will therefore hear what he wants to hear from the Israeli Prime
   Minister, Ariel Sharon, whose reoccupation of Palestinian territory
   has done so much to destroy his mission.