Arab Resolve Deepens Against Invasion of Iraq

Qatar’s foreign minister ended a two-day visit to Baghdad on Tuesday during which he added his voice to a growing chorus of Arab opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, complicating the Bush administration’s ability to launch an attack from the region.

The announcement coincided with a failed attempt by President Bush to win Saudi support for a military campaign and marked a victory for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s diplomatic efforts to shield his regime from attack.

Saudi Arabia already had ruled out the use of its territory as a base for a U.S. war against Iraq, and the U.S. reportedly has been moving weapons and equipment to Qatar in recent months. But the Qatari foreign minister’s statements suggested that the tiny Persian Gulf state would not be happy to serve as a base for a military campaign against Hussein.

“We are against any military action,” Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad Jassim ibn Jaber al Thani said Monday on arrival in Baghdad, adding that the United States has not asked for permission to use bases in Qatar. “This issue should be resolved through the United Nations and diplomatic means.”

The Qataris also called on Hussein’s regime to allow international weapons inspectors back in to confirm that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction.

While war remains a matter of speculation, the diplomatic fight between the U.S. and Iraq is well underway, with exchanges between them almost a daily routine. A speech Monday by Vice President Dick Cheney, in which he called Hussein a “mortal threat” who will “fairly soon” add a nuclear weapon to the Iraqi arsenal, was met Tuesday in Baghdad by television images of a smiling Hussein in a suit and tie chatting with the robed Qatari foreign minister.

While the hawks in Washington continue to hammer their justification for a preemptive strike against Iraq, Hussein is relentlessly sticking to his own message, one that reverberates in this region: An attack on Iraq would be an attack on the whole “Arab nation.”

On Tuesday, Bush met with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar ibn Sultan at the president’s ranch near Crawford, Texas. The Saudi side reiterated opposition to any military effort to overthrow Hussein, calling instead for a concerted diplomatic effort.

Meanwhile, Hussein continued throwing up defenses on almost every front. On Tuesday, his foreign minister was in China and his vice president in Syria. Iraq recently negotiated a $40-billion trade deal with Russia; has granted more than $1 billion in contracts to Turkey as part of the U.N.-approved “oil for food” program; returned looted archives to Kuwait; exchanged with Iran the remains of dead from their 1980-88 war; and in March formally recognized Kuwait’s territorial integrity.

But Hussein also is getting some help. Public support in the Arab world for Iraq is fueled by widespread anger over the U.S. relationship with Israel and the equally widespread conviction that Washington is using its declared war on terror as cover to advance its own interests. Public sentiment is so universal that even Kuwait--which a U.S.-led coalition liberated from Iraqi occupation in 1991--is officially opposed to an invasion.

“Kuwait won’t help the U.S. just for the sake of helping,” said Abdullah Sahar, a professor of political science at Kuwait University. “It will help if there is a clear plan that complies with United Nations resolutions.”

“The Kuwaiti people really want to see a change of regime in Iraq,” he added. “We don’t want to see an all-out invasion of Iraq by the U.S.; this would mean all Arab countries are invaded.”

Where Baghdad has refused to budge is on the issue of weapons inspectors, even while all of its Arab allies have called for Hussein to let them back in.

When a U.S.-led coalition forced Iraq out of Kuwait more than a decade ago, the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions that will be lifted only when inspectors verify that Iraq’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons have been destroyed, along with long-range missiles. Inspectors have been barred since 1998.

In comments printed in a government-controlled Iraqi newspaper Tuesday, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan seemed to rule out Iraq’s allowing inspectors back in, though the regime has played two ways on the issue, with some officials signaling that Baghdad is open to the idea and others ruling it out.

The U.N. inspectors “were the reason behind four U.S. aggressions on our country since 1991. So why should their presence in Iraq now prevent new U.S. attacks?” Ramadan was quoted as saying.

But Baghdad’s reluctance to let inspectors back has not diminished pan-Arab support for Iraq, if not for Hussein personally. The main issue for the Arab community is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Washington has insisted it is not--or, at least, should not be--linked with regime change in Iraq, but in the Arab world, the two matters are inextricable.

“We are hurt by the policies adopted, implemented, followed, that have resulted in total bias toward Israel. We are hurt,” Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said in an interview Tuesday. “We are hurt. We are angry, and we cannot forget what is going on or what has happened to the Palestinians. We are in no mood to talk about any attack against any other Arab country.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak delivered a similar message Tuesday to his nation in a televised address.

“I told the American government: If you strike at the Iraqi people because of one or two individuals and leave the Palestinian issue, not a single ruler will be able to curb the popular sentiments,” he said. “There might be repercussions, and we fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region.”

The gap between Washington and Cairo, or any other Arab capital, begins with a gap in perception. When Americans talk about a state headed by a terrorist, with weapons of mass destruction, that is in violation of U.N. resolutions and threatens the stability of the region, people here--almost universally, and rightly or wrongly--think of Israel. So when the White House talks of invading Baghdad, people here see a double standard.

“Of course there is hatred among all people, because of the threat of the United States attacking Iraq while the Israelis are attacking the Palestinians and also because the Iraqis are living in peace,” said Mohammed Saleh Musfir, a political scientist at Qatar University. “Why should America interfere?”

When the U.S. built the international coalition that drove Iraq from Kuwait, times were very different. Iraq was clearly viewed as the aggressor. Saudi Arabia, which borders Iraq, was nervous that its oil fields might be the next target of Hussein’s military. And the leadership in the region was generally terrified of an Iraq empowered by Kuwaiti oil.

These days, it is the United States that is widely viewed in the Middle East as the aggressor. U.S.-Arab ties are strained throughout the region--from Egypt, which is upset about a U.S. decision to link some financial aid to a human rights case, to Saudi Arabia, which feels it has been unfairly criticized since Saudi nationals participated in the Sept. 11 attacks.

These changes have aided and complemented Hussein’s own diplomatic offensive.

“The situation is what we consider to be a clear aggression against a sovereign state,” said Georges Jabbour, a professor of political science at Aleppo University in Syria.

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Jailan Zayan of The Times’ Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.