Kuwait Times

Published Date: January 07, 2008

AMMAN: US President George W Bush's visit to the Middle East this week will focus too much on Iran to the detriment of providing a much needed shot in the arm for regional peace, Arab commentators say. More so, Bush will not win any support for military action against Iran when he visits four Gulf Arab allies, political analysts in the region said. While Gulf states are concerned about Iran's nuclear program, they would be even more fearful of a US-Iranian conflict. "It might not spell the end of Iran as a
military power, but (merely) spark Iranian reactions against Gulf states which are more than these countries can take," Kuwait's Ayed Al-Manna told AFP.

Distrust of US policy among many ordinary people in the Gulf seems to have extended even to Kuwait, where the prevailing sentiment has been one of gratitude since a US-led coalition ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation in 1991. Kuwaitis are worried that Bush might exert pressure on Gulf states "to win their support for a military strike against Iran," which would "badly affect" the region's economy, Kuwaiti health ministry employee Sami Al-Mani told AFP.

Bush is also unlikely to secure concrete steps by his Gulf hosts to forge ties with Israel, according to Manna. Bush will presumably urge Gulf leaders to "extend a hand of friendship" to the Jewish state in order to boost Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but he will not get more than "promises" so long as no settlement is reached, Manna said. Although Washington rode roughshod over the Gulf states' opposition to its 2003 invasion of Iraq, they can be expected to urge Bush "not to escalate militarily with I
ran because of the consequences that military action would have in the region" and to pursue a peaceful settlement instead, said Emirati analyst Mohammed Al-Roken.

Bush's trip to the Middle East launches a busy year of overseas travel, a year-long goodbye clouded by the fight to succeed him and scarred by the Iraq war, experts say. US presidents not seeking reelection sometimes look abroad in their final year, partly to offset their diminished standing at home as lawmakers and the US public shift their attention to who will get the keys to the White House.

From Amman to Cairo, Arabs have expressed a strong belief that Bush will fail to achieve any progress during the eight-day visit, despite a high-profile US conference in November to revive Middle East peace talks. Many Arabs are concerned that efforts to solve the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict will be overshadowed by Washington's attempts to forge a regional front against Iran that could pave the way for a possible US strike on the Islamic republic. "Expectations that Bush's visit might succeed in ach
ieving a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process are not high at all," Jordanian political analyst Fahd Kheitan told AFP. Mohammed Al-Masri of the University of Jordan's Centre for Strategic Studies believes Bush will do "nothing more than push for improving the conditions of the Palestinians.

Bush is certainly not seeking "a final agreement or peace treaty" between Israel and the Palestinians, despite November's high-profile conference in Annapolis to revive Middle East peace talks, he said. The US president said in his weekly radio address on Saturday that he "will discuss the importance of countering the aggressive ambitions of Iran" and assure allies that "America will stay engaged in the region.

Bush will spend three days in Israel and the Palestinian West Bank town of Ramallah from next Wednesday in the first visit by a US president in nine years, following his predecessor Bill Clinton's trip in December 1998. The US president will also travel to the oil-rich countries of Bahrain and Kuwait - both of which are home to US troops - as well as regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Bush telephoned Jordan's King Abdullah II on Friday to discuss the visit, a day after the Jordanian monarch warned in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that stalling peace "threatens the region's future and stability". The Jordanian monarch pressed Olmert to halt all Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territory, saying they hinder the progress of peace and urged Israel to adopt "serious and practical policies" to advance peace.

This visit will be totally useless. It is just a pain-killing injection they are giving to the Palestinian people," said Yasser Abed, a 50-year-old taxi driver from the West Bank town of Ramallah. Amman car dealer Abu Ali accused Bush of "bias in favour of Israel" - a charge echoed across Arab capitals. "As an ordinary Arab citizen, I can't and will not be optimistic about Bush's visit to our region. We expect nothing but more problems and troubles from his visit," said Abu Ali, who declined to give his f
ull name.

There was equal indifference in Egypt, the last stop on Bush's tour. "What difference will it make? He's going to smile to the cameras and tell us he wants to save the world. We're used to their empty words and those of our leaders," said newspaper vendor Hamed Selim. Abdel Moneim Said, director of Egypt's Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told AFP "there is a simple hatred of the Bush administration" because of its policies in Iraq and toward the Palestinians.

Saudi newspaper columnist Hussein Shobokshi also offered a tough assessment. "Bush's tour is nothing but a routine and ceremonial one," Shobokshi wrote in the Saudi Asharq Al-Awsat, describing Bush as the "captain... (of) a ship stuck in the mud of Iraq.

Gulf wary
The oil-rich Gulf monarchies, including Qatar which Bush visited in 2003, have close military links with the United States and are major buyers of US weaponry. Kuwait hosts some 15,000 US troops and served as a launch pad for the Iraq invasion. Bahrain is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. One US aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S Truman, is currently operating in the Gulf, according to a Fifth Fleet spokesman - down from two last year.

But Washington has kept up the heat on Iran, with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates calling for the establishment of an "air and missile defence umbrella" over the Gulf region to deter missile attacks by Tehran. His comments last month came as the Pentagon announced proposed sales of Patriot missile defence and early warning systems to the UAE and Kuwait worth more than $10 billion. It also notified Congress of a possible sale to Saudi Arabia of upgraded AWACS airborne early warning systems worth another $
400 million.

Anwar Eshki, who heads a Saudi private think tank, said Washington wants to extend the "missile defence shield" planned in eastern Europe to the Gulf region in order to "encircle Russia," citing the Iranian "threat." While a US strike against Iran does not appear imminent, Israel might attack the Islamic republic and "drag the United States" into the conflict, he said. But Roken, whose country is Iran's largest trade partner, said Bush might be less interested in promoting military action than in discussin
g "non-military means of putting pressure on Iran," such as downgrading economic ties.

The UAE could agree to take some measures, like restricting banking transactions, "but I don't think it will go as far as cutting economic links, since this would harm the economy of the UAE, chiefly Dubai," he said. The Bush administration has been seeking to toughen UN sanctions against Iran. Echoing frequent criticism of US policies in the regional press, columnist Iman Kurdi wrote in the Saudi daily Arab News Saturday that while a US-Iranian showdown has so far been averted, Bush's "blood lust" means t
hat he may yet choose to "go out (from office in a year's time) on a bang.

Legacy
The danger for a president in their last year is to be seen as irrelevant, and the machinery of government seen as just adrift, awaiting the next president," said Eric Davis, political scientist at Middlebury College. International travel is a way "to get some attention to those issues" that Bush wants to highlight before he hands over the reins in January 2009, perhaps to a Democratic critic of his policies, said Davis.

The Iraq war has cost the lives of nearly 4,000 US soldiers and billions of dollars, and Democratic White House hopefuls are under heavy pressure to end US involvement there. Aides to Bush acknowledge that Iraq will define history's judgment of his time in office, but say the strategy there is working and that it will be up to the next president to complete the task.

Bush himself has said he hopes that North Korea's nuclear programs will be fully dismantled by the time he hands power to his successor - which would be a considerable diplomatic victory - and corral Iran over its atomic ambitions. The pressure is on. Andrew Cordesman, a foreign policy expert at the Center For Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank here, warns that "the only legacy you can leave is what you actually accomplished while you were in office". "You can't as a president leave a le
gacy in the form of an agenda for the next president," said Cordesman. "And at this point in time, with effectively a year to go, your legacy is what you've done, not what you would like to do.

But "the reality is much more probably that this process will move well into the next administration if it succeeds. And we don't have a particularly good history of handing off from one administration to another," said Cordesman. Bush is also expected to travel in February to sub-Saharan Africa, a chance to tout his overhaul of US aid to battle HIV/AIDS and his efforts to reward democratic reforms with better access to US markets.

Bush, who in November 2005 made the first ever trip to Mongolia by a sitting US president, has been invited back, but White House aides say it's unclear whether he will return to that country, which he has held up as an example of the spread of free-market and democratic reforms since the Cold War's end.

His crowded travel calendar also includes annually scheduled international gatherings like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit, in Romania in April; the Group of Eight industrialized countries gathering, in Japan in July; and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, in Peru in November.

Bush, who also plans a trip to China to see the Olympic games in August, in each case can be expected to add other destinations while making a case at home for his most cherished policies. His grand plans of overhauling US immigration policies and Social Security look dead, but the president has been working to make permanent his giant tax cuts and salvage controversial policies linked to the war on terrorism.

His best chance at shaping the national debate will be his annual State of the Union Address to US lawmakers, which is expected on January 2008. The US president has not anointed a personal preference in the November 4 US elections and vowed to keep out of the pitched political battle to succeed him - at least until his Republican party anoints a champion in September. - AFP