Gamal Nkrumah sees little change in the underlying thrust to US policies in the region United States President George W Bush appears determined to whitewash his party's tarnished image following the mid-term congressional elections. After the Republicans' poor performance in the US Congressional elections a chastened Bush has been attempting to reassure the world that he is still very much in charge. He is desperate not to be seen as a lame duck president, and once again it is the Middle East that is likely to suffer. "There's one thing I am not going to do. I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," President Bush told reporters in the Latvian capital Riga on the eve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit. From Riga Bush flew to Amman, the Jordanian capital, where he met King Abdullah of Jordan and the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. And though Bush is desperately scrambling to avert a complete disaster in Iraq, where the security situation is deteriorating by the hour, following his meeting with Arab leaders he issued statements that were once again long on promises and short of any substantive plan of action. Bush's playing down the role of the nationalist Baathists and focussing instead on militant Islamist insurrectionists is one sign of where US policy might be heading. "There is a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by Al-Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal," said Bush. "The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence and we want to help them do so," he added. Summits have reconciled enemies before, and they can also deepen friendships. The outcome of Bush's mini-summit with his Arab allies, though, is far from clear. Certainly some of Bush's comments on Iraq will have sounded offensive to many Arab ears. The US president continues to presume to speak on behalf of Iraqis. "One thing Iraqis would like to see is for Iranians to leave them alone," he told reporters in Riga. At the same time he has been signalling that Washington now wants to do business with Iran, though whether that involves turning a blind eye to Iran's nuclear ambitions in return for Iranian help in containing conflict in Iraq remains to be seen. Some 25 years ago, Iraq seemed poised to be one of the Middle East's brightest stars. Today its economy is in shambles and the country is on the brink of disintegration. Iraq is now a symbol of everything that has gone wrong in the Middle East under the dispensation of Pax- Americana. If such a volte face in Iraqi fortunes once seemed inconceivable, so too the U- turn the current administration is involved in vis-à-vis Iran. After blaming Iran and Syria for instigating the insurrection in Iraq that followed the US-led military occupation of the oil-rich country, Washington now acknowledges the indispensable role of Iran in reducing sectarian violence not only in Iraq, but in the entire Middle East. Prospects for a peaceful Middle East now seem pinned on a resolution of the Iraqi crisis, where the militant anti-American Shia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr has suspended his party's membership of the Iraqi government. It is not clear how Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will react to US overtures. America and Iran are alike inasmuch as they are ruthlessly pursuing their own agendas. What is important now is to ensure that the goals of either do not come at the expense of the Iraqi people. So is Bush's statement a not too subtle way of pulling the rug from beneath Tehran's feet? The US has repeatedly declared its main objective to be the introduction of multi-party democracy and political reform in Iraq and across the Middle East. The Bush administration also wants to introduce transparency to regional governments and claims to seek to reinforce accountability. They are all goals that are starting to look extremely shaky. "I understand these doubts but I do not share them," Bush said about his plans to "introduce" multi-party democracy in the Middle East. There are those who remain utterly pessimistic about Iraq's future, with many predicting the country is in danger of splitting. Then there are the optimists who believe such doomsday scenarios can still be avoided. There appears to be a rapprochement with Tehran, giving rise to hopes that Tehran will help to stabilise Iraq. Few doubt that Iran can play a more constructive role than it has in lessening the sectarian conflicts that threaten not only to tear its neighbour apart but also spill over into other states. "We warned from the start, and on more than one occasion, of the danger of turning a political dispute into a sectarian and religious conflict among the people of one religion and one country," King Abdullah of Jordan told the BBC in Amman on the eve of his meeting with Bush. Even America's closest allies are beginning to have cold feet. Polish President Lech Kaczynski has pledged to pull the remaining 900 Polish troops out of Iraq by the end of 2007. Washington's biggest problems, though, are caused less by the interference of others in Iraq than by its own addiction to overreach. Iraq is the most glaring example of a habit the US must break.
