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Monday, February 16, 1998
Hosni Mubarak, president of Egypt, has every reason not to trust Saddam Hussein. But as the confrontation with the Iraqi dictator over his refusal to comply with UN weapons inspectors nears the point of no return, the Egyptian leader finds it hard to conceive of a worse outcome for the Middle East than the US bombing Iraq. In late July 1990, as Iraqi troops massed on the frontier with Kuwait, Mr Saddam gave his word to Mr Mubarak that he would not enter the oil-rich emirate, but was simply trying to scare concessions out of its rulers. No sooner had the Egyptian president conveyed this message internationally than Iraq invaded. Mr Mubarak said at the time he felt "stabbed in the back", and has not spoken directly to Mr Saddam since the evening of the invasion. During the Gulf war Egypt played the leading role in harnessing Arab support to the US-led coalition against Iraq, but this time Cairo has co-ordinated Arab opposition to any new military conflict, the prospect of which it regards with alarm and foreboding. Mr Mubarak and fellow Arab leaders recognise the Iraqi leader is dangerous and unpredictable. As his neighbours, they have reason to fear his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons. But the Egyptian president said unequivocally yesterday in an interview with the FT in Cairo: "I think things will become much more serious with air strikes." In common with the rest of the region, the president - who came to power in 1981 after his predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamists from the Egyptian army - fears a popular backlash sweeping across the Middle East and beyond. In this view, the Arab masses are likely to react with fury to a US that brooks no compromise with Iraq while apparently tolerating Israel's failure to abide by its peace commitments to the Palestinians - as well as Israel's unacknowledged possession of nuclear warheads. "I told Madeleine Albright [the US secretary of state, recently in Cairo]: please leave enough room for the diplomatic effort to go ahead, and at the same time, something must be done to revive the [Middle East] peace process to make a balance," Mr Mubarak said. "We have to deal with public opinion in the Arab and Islamic world, and we are going to face a hell of a problem. This is very dangerous - I cannot stand against the whole weight of popular opinion," the president said. He thinks Mr Saddam has sensed, correctly, that popular sentiment in the Arab world has swung to his side. "This is not 1991," Mr Mubarak emphasised. The US has lost credibility in the Middle East. As well as the UN sanctions on Iraq, Washington has imposed sanctions on Libya, Iran and Sudan, but "done nothing about the Middle East peace process. This is what the people say. And then they see that the US is preparing to attack Iraq" for refusing to yield up all its weapons, while "at the same time, the Israelis have weapons of mass destruction and they say nothing". "The point here," he summarised, "is not what heads of state think. The point is what public opinion in our countries thinks", and "there are extremists waiting to act". The west, he says, "does not understand the psychology of people in this part of the world. You will not find one [Arab] leader who will say publicly: 'We support the air strikes.' " Moreover, Mr Mubarak, a pilot who commanded the Egyptian air force in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, does not believe air power can destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, especially since the present crisis arose because of Mr Saddam's success in concealing them. The strikes would be "to punish Saddam", he said. Should the US and the UK be hoping to topple Mr Saddam by destroying his military support and infrastructure, there was a risk that his successor could be more vengeful and dangerous, the president intimated. If Iraq were to break up into a Kurdish north, Sunni Moslem centre and Shia south, moreover, this "will lead to continuous violence and continuous wars". Here Mr Mubarak was carefully alluding to foreseeably forcible Turkish opposition to a Kurdish entity on its border, the danger of a Shia republic in the south falling under Iranian influence, and the unlikelihood of Iraqis from the centre accepting either development. "A united Iraq is essential to the peace of the whole region," he said. Mr Mubarak has sent four alarmed messages to Mr Saddam, after consultation with 14 Arab leaders. They all agreed, he said, that "we should send a direct warning" about the consequences of conflict. "I told Saddam: use your wisdom, for the sake of your people. Please listen to my advice this time, because you are going to destroy the country." Yet he recognises the difficulties of finding a solution that will save Mr Saddam's face. This is essential to his survival in the brutal politics of Iraq, whereas a renewed military assault could end by strengthening the Iraqi leader's grip. Mr Saddam, he said, sent one message that he was "doing his utmost", and another that "we can get a package together with the Russians". But Russia's diplomatic efforts - which never resolved whether all sites suspected of harbouring germ and nerve gas agents could be repeatedly inspected, and may have set a time limit to the scrutiny - have come up against US and UK refusal to accept preconditions or restrictions. Mr Mubarak's advice to Iraq now is therefore to "give them [the UN inspectors] the green light without preconditions, at least for the time being. Then we and others can help diplomatically to set a time limit" to the inspections, whose successful conclusion is the condition for lifting the UN embargo on Iraq. The Egyptian leader hopes that Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general who yesterday sent UN technicians to Iraq to survey "presidential" sites placed off-limits by Mr Saddam, will soon arrive in Baghdad and focus on a formula along these lines. "I hope he [Mr Annan] has some flexibility to negotiate", because "I think this is the last hope". |
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