Arabs need to do more to help Iraq in its reconstruction process, writes Salah Hemeid Iraq's US-backed 25-member Governing Council sent a delegation to Egypt this week for discussions with high-level Egyptian officials and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. The visit was part of a regional tour designed to win legitimacy and lobby Arab officials in a bid to reclaim Iraq's seat at the League ahead of the biannual meeting of the pan-Arab body's ministerial council convening next month. The Iraqi delegation was led by Ibrahim Al- Jaafari, the council's current head, who declared that their mere presence was proof of de facto recognition of the IGC's legitimacy. After meeting Prime Minister Atef Ebeid and Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, Al-Jaafari told reporters "The meaning of inviting and receiving us is an explicit recognition," adding "We are not here for personal affairs but for political business." At the Arab League, a relentless Al-Jaafari, leader of the Islamic Da'wa Party who spent most of his political career in exile in Iran and Britain before returning to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, said the delegation had asked Moussa to voice a stronger degree of support to the council and demanded that Iraq's seat at the pan-Arab organisation be given to the interim body. He said the council is determined to take part in the 9-10 September meeting of the Arab foreign ministers in Cairo. But despite praise heaped upon them by both Maher and Moussa, who stressed their visitors' patriotism and noble intentions, things did not seem to go their way. Maher, who interrupted his summer vacation on the northern coast to meet the delegation on Sunday, refused to budge from the Egyptian position of not recognising the legitimacy of the council, at least at this stage. "Egypt's position is still the same. The formation of the council is only a positive step on the right direction and things should be left to move naturally until the council shows its independence and powers," he said. Moussa -- who was sharply criticised by many Iraqis for his earlier rebuff of the council as being unelected and his declaration that Iraq's seat in the regional body will remain empty until a legitimate government is elected -- adopted a softer tone this time around. "The council is a de facto, and we deal with it as such. We deal with its members and we have no objection to its formation," he told reporters after the meeting. The remarks apparently contradicted an earlier statement by Moussa that he would only receive them as private, ordinary Iraqi citizens and not as council members. Trying to shake off the criticism for his earlier stance, Moussa suggested that Arab governments should determine whether the council is to take Iraq's seat at the League or not. What seems lacking in the Arab controversy about Iraq, however, is a proper debate that takes into account the desires of Iraqis themselves and the overall Arab interests. The editor-in-chief of Cairo's mass circulation weekly Al-Mussawar, Makram Mohamed Ahmed correctly noted in last week's issue that there are "negative implications" for the Arabs' refusal to recognise the Iraqi council. Ahmed described the Arab position as "paranoid" as well as "insulting" to the Iraqis, and labelled the policy of Egypt's Foreign Ministry as "unjustified". This direct addressing of the issues at hand is being carefully avoided by the Arab leaderships, who instead submit to the limited discourse of an angry Arab street. The diplomatic tug of war over the council's legitimacy has proven to be irrelevant and in some cases self-defeating. One of the keys to understanding the current situation is that Saddam's fall has had a positive effect on the region and its stability. The new regime in Iraq will find it difficult to continue Saddam's regional ambitions and will certainly play a moderating role in the region's politics. The regime change in Baghdad may soon recreate Iraq's former status as a net labour importer, while boosting regional trade and investment, aiding the Arab economies immensely. With huge reconstruction projects planned in Iraq, the prospects for regional economic cooperation look brighter once Iraq has emerged from its underdevelopment of the past 12 years. In his numerous statements in Cairo, Al- Jaafari tried to explain that it is not a perfect solution, yet it is the most representative governing body Iraqis could hope for. He repeatedly noted that the council was never meant to be the end point of the Iraqi political reconstruction but only its beginning. The clear message brought by the council's delegation to Cairo was that it is in the Arabs' own interests to extend a hand to the Iraqis to help them overcome current difficulties. Indeed, the consequences of failure in Iraq would be serious for the region and for global stability as a whole. If reconstruction continues to falter, Iraqi public opinion will coagulate in opposition to the occupation and armed resistance will mount. On the other side of the world, the American public may increasingly resent sustaining an intervention costing American lives and around one billion dollars a week and the US may be tempted to abruptly withdraw its troops from the growing chaos. This is a worst case scenario, possibly a recipe for civil war and the Balkanisation of the country into ethnic and sectarian entities. Iraqis and Arabs have a shared interest in preventing this scenario. As the delegation's tour has showed, the Arabs must make more of an effort and Iraqis should be given a far greater role in running their own country, particularly in creating a credible Iraqi authority. The bombing of the United Nations building in Baghdad that left 23 dead, including UN special envoy to Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, with increasing speculation that non-Iraqi terrorists might have been behind attack, is keeping the drama of Iraq on centre-stage. The cost of losing Iraq is too great to contemplate.
