Balochistan People’s Party

By Ahmed Janabi ; 27-12-2007; Al Jazeera

A principal founder of the US-funded tribal "Awakening Councils", or al-Sahwa, has said that parties loyal to Iran and Syria are targeting his group.

Abu Azam rejected accusations that al-Sahwa, formally known as The Tribal Arming Programme, was aimed at undermining the Iraqi resistance.

"Regional forces like Iran and Syria target our forces because they know if our forces bring stability to Iraq, the US would turn its attention on them. And that is the last thing they want," Abu Azam said.

Earlier this week two attacks on al-Sahwa killed and injured dozens in Baiji, 80km north of Baghdad, and Baquba.

Abu Azam said that the main goal of al-Sahwa is to stem growing Iranian power in Iraq.

"Our forces have achieved peace and stability in their areas by ejecting Iranian agents," he said.

Amir al-Musawi, a former advisor to Iran's ministry of defence, dismissed the accusations against his country.

"Iran expects such accusations at this stage. Next, when bombs go off in Shia areas, it will be projected as al-Sahwa taking revenge. This is the US gameplan. They do not want stability for Iraq for their own vested interests," he said.

Struggle for control

The al-Sahwa units came into prominence at the end of 2005 when they were formed by local tribes to fight alleged al-Qaeda members and affiliated groups, and challenge them for control of western and northern Iraq.

Following a series of successful al-Sahwa campaigns to control Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar province in western Iraq, the US military and tribal leaders entered into negotiations over funding, arming and training of the militias.

Each member of the al-Sahwa militias now receives a $300 monthly wage.
There are divisions among Sunni leaders over the militias and fears that they could form the nucleus of a separate Sunni army that could perpetuate the territorial break up of the country.

Critics point to comments made by Shia leaders who want a separate region for the sect in the south and Kurdish leaders who have set their eyes on an autonomous region in the north.

Fadil al-Rubei, an Iraqi historian, says al-Sahwa might become the de facto army of the intended Sunni region in central Iraq, given the fact that the majority of Iraq's army and police are Shia and the Kurds have their own Peshmerga forces.

Al-Rubei said: "I believe the US occupation has started the third phase of its strategy in Iraq. The first was to pit one sect against the other when it brought the Shia religious parties to power at the expense of the Sunnis and others."

"The second phase was to aid the losing sect [Sunnis], to annoy yesterday's winner and sow discord among sects. This was demonstrated by major modifications to the de-Baathification law and the re-employment of many former second rung [Baath] officials."

"The third phase is to strengthen the tribe against the sect. The creation of tribal militia has split the Sunnis. The Iraqi Islamic Party of Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraq's Sunni vice-president, backs the militias, while the Association of Muslim scholars, the highest Sunni authority in Iraq, is against them [the militias].

But Abu Azam dismissed fears over the breaking up of Iraq.

He said: "We do not think the Iranian-supported Shia political parties want to split Iraq. It is not in their interest to see the country parcelled out.

"Iraq's break up would have serious implications on Iran's national security. If a Shia Arab region is created, it would strengthen Arabs in Iran's al-Ahwaz region who have been struggling for their independence for decades.

"In the north, the links between Iraqi and Iranian Kurds is no secret; we do not think Iran would tolerate a strong Kurdish entity."

Sunni-Sunni rift

Sunni political parties, including Al-Tawafuq (the Iraq Accord Front) - the biggest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament with 44 of the 275 seats, support the al-Sahwa militias but with reservations.

Dhafir al-Ani, an MP from al-Tawafuq, said: "We are in support of these forces because they help to bring balance to the Iraqi political scene, which has been somehow monopolised by limited players belonging to one ideology.

"However, we have fears that the al-Sahwa issue could develop into a Sunni-Sunni clash, as some major Sunni parties and authorities have serious reservations about its role."

Many are suspicious of al-Sahwa because of its US connection. The militias have been accused of weakening the Iraqi resistance by targeting and arresting its fighters.

But Abu Azam says there is no contention between al-Sahwa and resistance groups.

"I would like to emphasise that al-Sahwa is not a US organisation as some would like to describe it. Many resistance factions joined al-Sahwa and they are working to enforce the rule of law, Iraqi law not anyone else's law.

"I led a one year of tough negotiations with the Americans to convince them of the al-Sahwa project. They have always rejected the idea. They preferred bringing pressure on the Iraqi government to enroll more Sunnis into the army and police."

Khalid al-Maeini, a senior researcher at the Iraqi Centre for Strategic Studies in Jordan, said: "The year 2008 will witness deep divisions among Iraqis, which will weaken the central government, [creating an] ideal environment for the breaking up of a country or the establishment of semi-independent regions."

"Sunnis are already split over al-Sahwa and the Shia alliance will see fatal divisions over sharing the billions of dollars Shia pilgrims bring to the shrines in Najaf and Karbala every year, apart from controlling Basra's wealth and power."

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Islamabad's Balochistan policy

By SENATOR SANAULLAH BALOCH ; http://www.bso-na.org

The president dramatically has softened his approach towards the leaders of the two mainstream parties due to the increased internal and foreign pressures. But regime policy towards moderate and autonomy seeking Baloch nationalists seems unchanged. After using full force and persecution now Islamabad is determined to politically marginalise the natives of strategically significant and resource rich province of Balochistan.Balochistan is among the unfortunate region, suffering since the take over of military rule in 1999. Top policy makers in Islamabad believe on indiscriminate repression of the Baloch people, those demanding politico-economic autonomy.

Legitimate nationalist parties have been bared to freely express their views and their representatives have been harshly targeted for not supporting military's unpopular war in Balochistan.Credible and popular Baloch leadership is marked as enemy number one by the security agencies. Contrary to the constitutional safeguards high level of intimidation and harassment campaign was launched by the government against political representatives and innocent citizens of province.

Mr Akhter Mengal, the former chief minister of Balochistan and head of Balochistan National Party is detained since November 2006. Balach Marri, a young Baloch politician and son of prominent Baloch leader was recently killed. Each day police and paramilitary troops continue to detain innocent citizens without lawful procedure.

Although, the government has always been tried to discredit the Baloch leadership, blaming them anti-development, corrupt, anti-social and even anti-state elements, but it's evident that nationalist leadership in Balochistan have never been involved in any mega corruption and loan embezzlement like other pro-establishment and politicians of dominated province.

In November, 1999, NAB published a list of more than 320 names of Pakistan's top loan defaulters, but none of Baloch nationalist, politician or business man was among the nonpayer of $4 billion loan embezzlement. Eighty percent of these debtors were from Punjab province and majority of them were close allies of the president, holding important political offices during 2002 to 2007.

Islamabad's unpleasant policies are resulting in to deep alienation of Baloch masses from the center. There is total ignorance and lack of understanding in the establishment about Balochistan and their demands. Majority believes that recognition of the Baloch demands will encourage other regions to raise their voice for autonomy. But this presumed argument is totally baseless. Because rest of the regions and national groups are well represented in top policy making and implementation institutions and they have been dealt fairly and friendly by the civil-military bureaucracy in last six decades. But Balochistan has gone through repeated military operations and deprived of its fair political and economic share in the federation.

The current frustration in the province has manifested after a pause of three decades, where the establishment fails to address the province problems according to the wish and will of the people. Continued political and economic marginalisation has compelled them to raise their concerns on mega projects, as they perceive that these developments will not result in greater economic opportunities.
Islamabad is capable to win the military battles in Balochistan but its hard to conquer the hearts and minds of Baloch people. Population in Balochistan is not power crazy and neither have they demanded any top political slots in the country, but they are passionate to see that their society is equally empowered. Islamabad's slow motion response to the burning issues of Balochistan is unwise. Central government's continued leniency towards corrupt and unpopular groups in Balochistan is disastrous.

It's hard to understand that why security agencies are annoyed with credible Baloch leaders and feel comfortable with corrupt and ill-mannered self-created leaders.

Islamabad must rethink its strategy towards Balochistan and allow all moderate leaders and parties to fairly take part in the political system. All detained Baloch leaders and workers must be released. There should be free, fair judicial and legal remedy available for the every citizen in province. Government authorities must stop the practice of collective punishment and should focus on their job without ethnic and regional prejudice.

No doubt, that there is no pressure on the regime to reverse its policies towards Balochistan, but as a citizen of country Baloch people also deserve equal treatment and right to live in peace.

The writer is member Senate of Pakistan
E-mail: balochbnp@gmail.com
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By Emily Wax and Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
January 1, 2008;

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 31 -- Pakistani authorities have pressured the medical personnel who tried to save Benazir Bhutto's life to remain silent about what happened in her final hour and have removed records of her treatment from the facility, according to doctors.

In interviews, doctors who were at Bhutto's side at Rawalpindi General Hospital said they were under extreme pressure not to share details about the nature of the injuries that the opposition leader suffered in an attack here Dec. 27.

"The government took all the medical records right after Ms. Bhutto's time of death was read out," said a visibly shaken doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Sweating and putting his head in his hands, he said: "Look, we have been told by the government to stop talking. And a lot of us feel this is a disgrace."

The doctors now find themselves at the center of a political firestorm over the circumstances of Bhutto's death. The government has said Bhutto, 54, was killed after the force of a suicide bombing caused her head to slam against the lever of her vehicle's sunroof. Bhutto's supporters have pointed to video footage, including a new amateur video released Monday, as proof that she was killed by gunfire.

The truth about what happened has serious implications in Pakistan. The ability of a gunman to fire at Bhutto from close range, as alleged by her supporters, would suggest that an assassin was able to breach government security in a city that serves as headquarters of the Pakistani military, bolstering her supporters' claims that the government failed to provide her with adequate protection.

If a gunman were to blame, it would also raise questions as to why the government has for days insisted otherwise. Bhutto's supporters have called for an international investigation.

The government has repeatedly dismissed allegations of a coverup, and some U.S. medical experts, when asked Monday to review an official hospital description of her wounds, speculated that a skull fracture and not a bullet wound killed Bhutto.

The medical personnel in Rawalpindi, meanwhile, have mostly remained quiet.

"Our doctors have become caught up in this very emotional and political issue," said Fayyaz Ahmed Khan, the doctors' supervisor at Rawalpindi General. "It's a terrible position for our medical professions to be in."

A newly released video that was obtained by Britain's Channel 4 and broadcast Monday cast doubt on the government's claims and appeared to corroborate witnesses' stories. The footage appeared to show a gunman and a suspected suicide bomber approaching Bhutto's sport-utility vehicle. Seconds later, the video showed gunfire and Bhutto's hair and scarf being blown back just as a bomb explodes.

Government officials identified Baitullah Mehsud, a pro-Taliban commander in the restive South Waziristan region, as the organizer of Bhutto's killing. But some observers said the government has been too quick to blame the attack on the Taliban.

Jameel Yusuf, a lead investigator in the 2002 disappearance of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi, said the Pakistani government had blundered badly by not sealing off the crime scene. Moments after Bhutto was killed, workers hosed down the blood at the blast site before any evidence could be collected.

"When you're dealing with a murder of this nature, you need to have forensics," Yusuf said.

Several witnesses say they had yet to be interviewed by police.

Kamran Nazir, 19, was badly injured by shrapnel at the rally where Bhutto was killed. On Monday, he was at Rawalpindi General, with his father at his bedside. His breathing was labored, and the top layer of skin on his face was singed off. He said he was shocked that police had not questioned him.

"Why is no one asking me what happened? It's important to know the truth," he said as his father's eyes went wet.

"The truth is, there really is no investigation at all," said Babar Awan, a top official in Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party who said he saw Bhutto's body after the attack and identified two clearly defined bullet wounds -- entry and exit points.

He said that the principal professor of surgery at the hospital, Muhammad Mussadiq Khan, was "extremely nervous, but eventually told me that Bhutto had died of a bullet wound."

"Why was this man so nervous?" Awan said. "He told me firsthand he was under pressure not to talk about how she died."

Reached at his home in Islamabad, Khan declined to comment, saying he worked for a government hospital and was trying to "do my duty and remain a doctor." In published reports in the English-language newspaper Dawn, Khan has changed his story on multiple occasions, first speaking about bullet wounds and later backing away from those comments.

Over the weekend, Athar Minallah, a board member at Rawalpindi General, e-mailed journalists Bhutto's medical report. The report, which was separate from documents that doctors say have been confiscated, describes a deep wound in Bhutto's head that was leaking brain matter.

No "foreign body" was found in the wound, the report says, and no exit wound was recorded. But in an X-ray of Bhutto's skull, the doctors identified "two to three tiny radio-densities." Minallah said in an interview that the report suggested those were bullet fragments.

U.S. medical experts said the "radio-densities" were probably not bullets.

Thomas M. Scalea, physician in chief of the shock trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said that while there was no evidence of a bullet wound, he was also perplexed by how the blunt force of Bhutto's head against an object could have caused brain damage severe enough to kill her so quickly.

"The whole thing strikes me as very unusual," said Scalea.

Bhutto's widower and the interim leader of her party, Asif Ali Zardari, has requested an investigation into her death by the United Nations.

President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman, retired Gen. Rashid Qureshi, said Musharraf is "considering" an offer from the British government to assist in an investigation. Qureshi said Bhutto's husband bore responsibility for the controversy, because he had denied the government permission to conduct an autopsy immediately after Bhutto's death, on the grounds that it could not be trusted.

"The body can be exhumed now if the family allows," Qureshi said. "There's no problem with that."

Witte reported from Karachi. Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar and staff writer Jason Ukman and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
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Cursed to be wealthy

01 Jan 2008 ; Iran Focus Editorial

London, Jan. 01 - Nearly 150 billion dollars in oil revenues flooded Iran’s foreign reserves during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 30-month tenure as the Islamic Republic’s president. So, why have economic hardships actually increased for the Iranian people?

Any democratic government, or at least a stable one, would have been well capable of transforming such wealth into economic prosperity for its people. The lack of such prosperity is a clear consequence of a lack of democracy, accountability, and rule of law in Iran.

The ruling mullahs are notorious for flouting human rights. In December, for example, the UN General Assembly voted to condemn systematic violations of human rights in Iran. Similarly, the mullahs are known for disrespecting and defying UN Security Council resolutions with regards to their nuclear program.

But they also violate economic norms and laws. A regime which executes minors and stones women to death is no candidate for free market economics. That is why for nearly three decades, Iran’s economy has been fraught with corruption, inefficiency, and lack of investment for long-term development projects. It has been designed to safeguard the interests of the theocratic regime, which bears absolutely no similarity to a liberal democracy.

Though Iran’s economic woes essentially stem from widespread systemic and structural deficiencies such as a weak private sector and severely hampered domestic production, the particular policies executed during Ahmadinejad’s tenure have added overwhelming pressure to such a feeble edifice.

Faced with domestic and international pressure, Ahmadinejad has sought to concentrate economic decision-making power into his own office. During his tenure, he initiated significant sweeping and over-night changes.

In 2007, for example, Ahmadinejad dissolved the “Management and Planning Organisation.” The latter was a 70-year-old macro economic planning body charged with annual budget preparations. It was replaced by a division at the office of the presidency, thus bringing it directly under Ahmadinejad’s control.

The most vital decisions of Iran’s Central Bank are now dictated by Ahmadinejad himself. Last year, following a presidential decree, government banks reduced their interest rates, inviting criticism from financial circles. Not surprisingly, the Bank’s governor resigned in August 2007.

Under a president embellishing himself by populist antics, liquidity, inflation, corruption, and unemployment have sky-rocketed. Since 2005, liquidity has more than doubled from $72.3 billion in 2004 to $148.9 billion in 2007, according to the Associated Press.

A rise in imports has left many independent manufacturers bankrupt. Furthermore, according to Tehran’s official estimates, inflation has soared to 23 percent. Independent observers put the figure closer to 30 percent. Housing prices in some parts of Tehran, for example, have jumped seven-fold.

With an unfavourable investment atmosphere, Iran has been drained of nearly 200 billion dollars in capital. The Tehran Stock Exchange has lost nearly 20 percent of its value since Ahmadinejad came to office.

All this has obviously created a devastating livelihood for the Iranian people. Millions of people have been left with mind-numbing poverty and unemployment, which have inevitably led to a sizable increase in social ills such as petty crime, drug addiction, and prostitution.

The Iranian people have been all but quiet about this. According to published statistics, various sectors of society have carried out more than 240 acts of protests against the Iranian regime last November alone. In response, the regime has increased the number of public executions – nearly 300 hangings since January – and stepped up its crackdown on human rights by arresting hundreds of thousands of youths under bogus pretexts such as “mal-veiling.”

During recent months, university students exhibited amazing courage by holding more than 60 anti-government demonstrations and gatherings. Most notable among them was the December 9, 2007 demonstration at Tehran University, during which students chanted “death to dictator” and “freedom is our inalienable right.”

The fact of the matter is that under the mullahs’ rule, the vast oil wealth is a curse for the Iranian people because it is not infused into structural development for economic progress. It is rather spent by the mullahs on their nuclear program and fundamentalist activities in Iraq and the Middle East at large. Economic progress in Iran has thus become wholly dependent on political transformation.

Such transformation cannot be achieved by appeasing the mullahs or persuading them to change their behaviour, a miscalculated policy the West has pursued in the past 28 years. The entire regime must be replaced with a government that is representative of and responsive to the demands of Iran’s 70 million people.
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KARACHI, Pakistan -- Last week the world was shocked, and my life was shattered, by the murder of my beloved wife, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. Benazir was willing to lay down her life for what she believed in -- for the future of a democratic, moderate, progressive Pakistan. She stood up to dictators and fanatics, those who would distort and defy our constitution and those who would defame the Muslim holy book by violence and terrorism. My pain and the pain of our children is unimaginable. But I feel even worse for a world that will have to move forward without this extraordinary bridge between cultures, religions and traditions.

I married Benazir in 1987 but spent less than five years living with her in the prime minister's house over her two terms in office, which were interrupted by military interventions. I spent more than 11 years in Pakistani jails, imprisoned without a conviction on charges that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf (who brought and pursued the charges) have now publicly acknowledged were politically motivated. Even before Benazir was first elected prime minister, in 1988, Pakistan's intelligence agencies began working to discredit her, targeting me and several of her friends. I was called "Mr. Ten Percent" by their hired guns in public relations, and the names of her friends abroad were besmirched with ridiculous charges that they headed the nonexistent "Indo-Zionist" lobby.

This campaign of character assassination was possibly the first institutional application of the politics of personal destruction. Benazir was the target, and her husband and friends were the instruments. The purpose was to weaken the case for a democratic government. It is perhaps easier to block the path of democracy by discrediting democratic politicians.

During the years of my wife's governments, she was constrained by a hostile establishment; an interventionist military leadership; a treacherous intelligence network; a fragile coalition government; and a presidential sword of Damocles, constantly threatening to dismiss Parliament. Despite all of this, she was able to introduce free media, make Pakistan one of the 10 most important emerging capital markets in the world, build over 46,000 schools and bring electricity to many villages in our large country. She changed the lives of women in Pakistan and drew attention to the cause of women's rights in the Islamic world. It was a record that she was rightly proud of.

Her murder does not end her vision and must not be allowed to empower her assassins. Those responsible -- within and outside of government -- must be held accountable. I call on the United Nations to commence a thorough investigation of the circumstances, facts and coverup of my wife's murder, modeled on the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. And I call on the friends of democracy in the West, in particular the United States and Britain, to endorse the call for such an independent investigation. An investigation conducted by the government of Pakistan will have no credibility, in my country or anywhere else. One does not put the fox in charge of the henhouse.

But it is also time to look forward. In profound sadness, the torch of leadership in the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has been passed to a new generation, to our son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. I will work with him and support him and protect him to the extent possible in the trying times ahead. The Bhutto family has given more than anyone can imagine to the service of our nation, and in these difficult days it is critical that the party remain unified and focused. My wife, always prescient and wise, understood that. Knowing that the future was unpredictable, she recommended that the family keep the party together for the sake of Pakistan. This is what we aim to do.

The Musharraf regime has postponed the elections scheduled for Tuesday not because of any logistical problems but because Musharraf and his "King's Party" know that they were going to be thoroughly rejected at the polls and that the PPP and other pro-democracy parties would win a majority. Democracy in Pakistan can be saved, and extremism and fanaticism contained, only if the elections, when they are held, are free, fair and credible.

To that end, the people of Pakistan must be guaranteed elections that are (1) conducted under a new, neutral caretaker government, free of cronies from Musharraf's party; (2) supervised by an independent and autonomous election commission formed in consultation with the major political parties; (3) monitored by trained international observers who have unfettered access to all polling stations as well as the right to conduct exit polling to verify results; (4) covered by electronic and print media with the freedoms they had before martial law was imposed on Nov. 3; and (5) arbitrated by an independent judiciary as provided for in the constitution. In addition, all political activists, lawyers and judges being detained must be released.

The enemies of democracy and tolerance who took my wife from me and from the world can and must be exposed and marginalized. Dictatorship and fanaticism have always been rejected by the people of Pakistan. If free and fair elections are held, those forces will be defeated again on Feb. 18. And on that day, the vision and indefatigable spirit of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto will burn brightly, and, in the words of John Kennedy, "the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

Asif Ali Zardari, a former senator, is co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party with his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

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By Marc Lynch ; Fri Jan 4, 2008

Washington - 'Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos," Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Gulf dignitaries in Bahrain last month. But in reality, everywhere you turn, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, you now see Iranian leaders shattering longstanding taboos by meeting cordially with their Arab counterparts.
The Gulf has moved away from American arguments for isolating Iran. American policymakers need to do the same.

The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are accommodating themselves to Iran's growing weight in the region's politics. They remain key parts of America's security architecture in the region, hosting massive US military bases and underwriting the American economy in exchange for protection. But as Saudi analyst Khalid al-Dakheel argues, they are no longer content sitting passively beneath the US security umbrella and want to avoid being a pawn in the US-Iranian struggle for power. Flush with cash, they are not interested in a war that would mess up business.

That's why America's attempt to shore up containment against Iran increasingly seems to be yesterday's battle. On Dec. 3, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the GCC in Doha, Qatar. It was the first time an Iranian leader had addressed the alliance, which was formed in 1981 against the Iranian challenge.

Weeks later, Saudi King Abdullah invited Mr. Ahmadinejad to Saudi Arabia – the president's third visit in a year – for the hajj, or Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. The king used the occasion to hold cordial talks.

Iran is even reaching out to Egypt. Ali Larijani, head of Iran's National Security Council, visited Cairo recently for the highest level talks in 27 years. Afterward, Arab League chief Amr Moussa bluntly stated that there was no point in Arabs treating Iran as an enemy.

Gulf Arabs have thus visibly discarded the central pillar of the past year of America's Middle East strategy. Saudis and Egyptians had been the prime movers in anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite agitation. When they are inviting Ahmadinejad and Mr. Larijani to their capitals, America's talk of isolating Iran sounds outdated.

One hears little today of the "Shiite crescent" threatening the region, against which Arab officials once gravely warned. The Bush administration's proposed "axis of moderation," joining Sunni Arab states and Israel against Iran, has quietly passed from view.

Meanwhile, the GCC seems more unified and confident than it has in years. Earlier this week the six member countries agreed to form a common market. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have mended fences. Pressures for domestic political reforms have been largely defanged, and the oil bonanza has allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue an energetic foreign policy. The Gulf states won't abandon their US protectors anytime soon, but they seem more willing than ever to act on their own initiative.

The emerging signs of a tentative thaw in the Gulf are not due solely to the release of the findings in last month's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iran was no longer pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The NIE helped trigger the thaw by convincing Arabs that a US-led war against Iran had become much less likely. But it has long been clear that most Gulf rulers have no appetite for a war that would disrupt their economic boom and put them at the most risk. The Gulf media today speaks more of avoiding war than of fomenting it.

Even in Iraq, fears of a Saudi-Iranian proxy war have given way to hints of an emerging modus vivendi. Gulf regimes remain hostile to the pro-Iranian Iraqi government. But instead of trying to replace its Shiite leader, Nouri al-Maliki, they now seem satisfied that the rise of the Sunni "Awakenings" – US-backed neighborhood councils that have begun fighting Al Qaeda – will check Iranian ambitions. Saudi and Iranian clients in Iraq even seem to be carving out zones of influence, as suggested by recent talks between the Sunni Anbar Salvation Council and the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

This is not to say that the Gulf states are comfortable with Iranian power. Anti-Shiite and anti-Persian sentiment exists throughout the Gulf. Iran's territorial dispute with the United Arab Emirates generates considerable passion in that country. Few Gulf or Arab leaders publicly welcome an Iranian nuclear program. And Ahmadinejad's proposal of a new Gulf security architecture including Iran was widely seen as an initiative for Iranian hegemony, not a genuine collective security arrangement.

Gulf states see Iran as a challenge that they have been dealing with for decades, not an urgent or existential threat. The shifting Arab approach may leave the US with little choice but to do the same. Just as America's containment of Iraq began to collapse in the late 1990s when its Arab neighbors lost faith in the value of sanctions, the new Gulf attitudes will probably now shape what the US can do with Iran.

• Marc Lynch is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.

http://news.yahoo.com
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Bush to propose ME plan to combat Iran

US President George W. Bush will work with Middle East allies to develop a security plan to counter Iran during his upcoming visit to the region.

In his weekly radio address, Bush said that curtailing Iran's "aggressive ambitions" will be one of the key aims of his trip to the region this week.

He did not provide details about the plan, but Arab diplomats said they expected the US president to offer closer military cooperation with moderate allies in the Persian Gulf, Egypt and Jordan.

Bush said Iran remained a threat because it continued to develop missiles that could deliver nuclear weapons and had resisted international demands to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a bomb.

The president urged the international community to keep up the pressure on Iran despite a recent US intelligence report saying Teheran suspended nuclear weapons development in 2003 and had not restarted it.

"It's important for the people in the region to know that while all options remain on the table, I believe we can solve this problem diplomatically, and the way to do that is to continue to isolate Iran in the international community," Bush said.

In an interview with Channel 2, Bush said if he were an Israeli he would take the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" - seriously.

Bush promised that the US will defend Israel "without ifs or buts."

He downplayed the recent US intelligence report on Iran, saying "it means to me that Iran was a threat and is a threat."

The president is to arrive in Israel on Wednesday and will meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres.

The following day he will travel to the West Bank for talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad in Ramallah.

On Friday, before leaving Israel, Bush will meet with Quartet special Middle East envoy Tony Blair and visit Yad Vashem. He will then travel to Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia before wrapping up his trip with talks at Sharm e-Sheikh with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak before returning to Washington.

There has been speculation that Bush will also visit Lebanon and Iraq while he is in the region, but the White House has not confirmed that.

Bush's upcoming visit, President Shimon Peres said Saturday, could provide the necessary boost to enable a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement by the end of 2008.

"I think this visit by Bush will mark the transition from talk to Action," Peres told Channel 2 news.

Peres added that the current trio of leaders - Bush, Olmert and Abbas - had the right attitudes to make real progress on the peace process.

Israeli officials confirmed Saturday that there are no plans for a tripartite Bush-Olmert-Abbas meeting during the president's visit.

In his weekly radio address, Bush said he planned to push both Olmert and Abbas to make progress on the peace talks that were relaunched at Annapolis.

"This is difficult work. It will require tough decisions on complex questions," Bush said. "But I am optimistic about the prospects and I will make clear that America is deeply committed to helping both parties."

The president said he would urge Arab leaders at his other destinations to help move the process forward.

Sheera Claire Frenkel contributed to this report; http://www.jpost.com