The prickly question of political reform dominated discussions at this week's Arab Strategic Forum. Mohamed Darwish reports from Dubai Nearly 2,000 Arab and international figures gathered this week in the United Arab Emirates for the Arab Strategic Forum. The meeting, held from 13 to 15 December under the slogan "The Arab World in 2020", aimed to formulate a common vision of the region's future. But in the end, it served more to illustrate fundamental differences in opinion between the Arabs and their Western interlocutors. The gathering featured an international crowd of the highest calibre. Former United States president Bill Clinton was present, as well as former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former NATO commander general Wesley Clark, IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei, and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. From the Arab side, UAE Defence Minister Mohamed Bin Rashid Al-Maktum, whose country hosted the meeting, attended, as did Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanim, former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri, Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jasim Al-Thani, Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki Al-Faysal Al-Saud, and Syrian Expatriates Minister Buthayna Shaaban. Bill Clinton offered two scenarios, one pessimistic and one optimistic, for the region over the next 15 years. In the pessimistic scenario, conflict would continue, no Palestinian state would be created, and economic stagnation would persist. Under that scenario, some countries would seek to develop weapons of mass destruction, and some regimes would be tempted to embrace Islamic fundamentalism. In the happier scenario, the Arab-Israeli conflict would be resolved and a Palestinian state would be established. Contradicting George W Bush's assessment, Clinton ruled out the possibility of a Palestinian state being created in the next four years. Turning to the economy, Clinton said that $5 trillion in assets are owned by the poor in the Arab world, but they are not utilised fully, because their owners cannot use them as collateral. The former US president singled out for praise Gamal Mubarak, head of Egypt's NDP Policies Committee, for his efforts to support small-scale industry. Clinton urged improved education in the Arab world and closer trade ties with both Europe and the US. Madeleine Albright spoke in the same vein, urging the Arabs to modernise their education system and stress creativity, rather than learning by rote. Wesley Clark reviewed the security threats facing the region. According to the former NATO commander, the situation in Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict, extremism, and Iran's attempt to obtain nuclear arms all pose grave threats to the region. He advised Iraq's neighbours to form a team that would work together to promote healthy relations with the US, discourage those who are trying to obstruct the Iraqi elections, and support the new Palestinian leadership. Defending the Arabs against Western misconceptions, UAE Defence Minister Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid Al-Maktum declared that "reform will not be achieved through foreign schemes and ready-made formulas, nor through the thud of cannons and the roaring of tanks." He stated that the Muslim world is currently being vilified by people who are determined to cast every conflict of interest as a conflict of religion. "We understand the anger caused by the criminal acts and deviant conduct of a few of the followers of our religion, and have participated in the international campaign against terror. But we refuse to have all Muslims blamed for such acts, to be called backward and barbaric, and to have Islam portrayed as the antithesis of modern and Western civilisation." We cannot stop progress just because there are crises along the way, Al-Maktum argued. "I don't understand how any crisis, however great, can stop processes of economic, administrative, and legislative reform, or obstruct a scheme to eliminate illiteracy. What do foreign factors have to do with the continued enforcement of legislation dating from Ottoman times? What do foreign factors have to do with corruption?" In a harsh message to fellow Arab officials, Al-Maktum told them to "change, or you'll be changed. Unless you introduce radical reforms, restore respect to public service and consolidate the principles of transparency, justice, and accountability, your nations will spurn you and history will condemn you." The UAE defence minister summarised the main threats facing the region as being war, civil war, human rights abuses, genocide, poverty, epidemic disease, environmental problems, nuclear weapons, terror, and organised crime. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hochiar Zibari provided an overview of Iraq's future, referring only in general terms to the US occupation and Iraq's ties with Arab countries. A "rosy future" awaits Iraq once the elections are held in late January, he said, and once the Iraqis defeat "the forces of evil, the remnants of Saddam's regime, and the armed people who infiltrate into Iraq from neighbouring countries". Zibari expected Iraq to be "a pivotal country in the international and regional security equations in their new shape". The departure of foreign troops from Iraq, he declared, hinges on the restoration of political stability in the country. "The multinational forces have saved Iraq from civil war, prevented it from being divided, from splitting into ethnic entities following the removal of Saddam's regime." The Iraqi foreign minister added that the presence of foreign troops helped contain security problems and prevented them from spreading to neighbouring countries. Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faysal said that "the Arab world will not emerge as a strong regional power within its current framework over the next 15 years, but may do so in different geographic and economic frameworks." Al-Faysal predicted the emergence of a common market combining Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf States, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria. Another common market, he said, may emerge in North Africa and become closely affiliated with the European countries of the north Mediterranean. Al-Faysal expected the US to maintain bases in some of the smaller Arab countries and reduce its presence in Iraq as time goes by. On an optimistic note, the ambassador said that "Islamic forces, or the forces associated with political Islam, would become more realistic, accept the concepts of pluralism and rotation of power, and recognise the impossibility of the creation of a pure Islamic state or the restoration of the Caliphate. Instead, these forces will follow secular politics that are inspired by Islamic morality. The political openness the region is going to have will encourage them to do so." Terrorist groups, he said, have lost their popularity, and will not be able to recruit new members once moderate religious forces are allowed back onto the political scene. "To know where the region is heading, we have to look at where the region stands today," Syrian Expatriates Minister Buthayna Shaaban told the conference. The minister bemoaned the fact that the Arabs are used as scapegoats and blamed for terror, while Palestine and Iraq are suffering the worst types of violence imaginable. The Arabs, she said, cannot make the West hear their voice because of the weakness of their own media and the bias of the Western press and television. "Iraqi and Palestinian blood is worth just as much as US and Western blood," Shaaban concluded. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said that reform is linked to the creation of an independent Palestinian state as well as to peace, the rule of law, and citizenship. "We have to be able to formulate a peace strategy based on self- confidence and on dealing with others as equal," Ashrawi told the meeting. The Palestinian official also denounced corruption across the Arab world. "The Arab world has not yet figured out a way to move on from the current polarisation between the existing regimes and the extremists to a climate of democratic pluralism that guarantees the peaceful and orderly rotation of power." "The Arabs will continue to react rather than act," said former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri, who went on to call for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict and ending the occupation of Iraq. But the future of the Arab world is not totally dark, and we have to look at the "full half" of the glass, he advised the crowd. But it was the "empty half" of the same glass that IAEA chief El-Baradei chose to discuss. The region is under threat of being divided into a series of mini-states, he argued. "Israel is not going to abandon its weapons of mass destruction as part of the peace process," said El-Baradei. "Achieving a just and comprehensive peace is the best way to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction." The Arab region, he added, faces many serious problems, such as poverty, AIDS, international crime, and the spread of WMD. El-Baradei urged closer cooperation among Arab countries in security matters. The Arabs, he stated, need to create an Arab security system. "We also have to cooperate closely with various international powers, for no one country can defend itself alone." Lakhdar Brahimi was more optimistic. "There is no danger to the Arab region from neighbouring countries, not from Turkey or Iran or Africa. Europe has taken broad strides toward consolidating its ties with the Arab world, but the Europeans are disappointed that the Arabs don't speak to them with a single voice," he explained. Urging a solution for the Palestinian problem, the UN envoy said, "If our American friends are convinced that the innocent people dying in Palestine are not innocent, what do they have to say about the way the Israelis are treating Palestinian trees? Israel has uprooted over 1.1 million trees and destroyed entire crops without our American friends, who claim to defend human rights, doing anything to stop such actions."
