EU picks up the pieces in Middle East after Iraq war

World View/Paul Gillespie: One year on from the Iraq war, Arab leaders this week cancelled an Arab League summit due to be held in Tunis because they could not agree in advance about contentious issues on its agenda.

The most important of them concern political change, modernisation, reform and democratisation in the region. It was also to discuss an initiative on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The summit was to have been attended by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, on behalf of the EU and by many other international observers concerned that a failure to deliver on political change in the region will intensify terrorism and a spillover of instability to Europe.

As Chris Patten, the Commissioner for External Relations, told the European Parliament this week, EU policy is "to create a ring of well-governed countries on the borders of the Mediterranean with whom we can enjoy close and co-operative relations".

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, visited Cairo after the summit was cancelled and urged regional leaders to "assert control over their own development agenda". This echoes a wider concern spelled out in the EU's Strategic Partnership with the Mediterranean and the Middle East, a document published a fortnight ago which is to be ratified as a general policy statement at the June EU summit.

It says consultation and partnership are key elements in the new relationship. "Political, economic and social reform is required in order to meet these challenges. Such reform cannot be imposed from outside. They must be generated from within." The primary goal is to create "a common zone of peace, prosperity and progress".

The Middle East peace process is seen not as a precondition for reform but an equal objective. As Patten put it, "Stalemate in the peace process has time and again stymied progress on reform".

The EU policy is to co-operate with other international players, notably the US, the Group of Eight and NATO, in which the EU would have a "complementary but distinctive approach".

That distinctiveness clearly relates back to the Greater Middle East Initiative launched last November by President Bush. He includes Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey in the policy. It is modelled on the Helsinki Charter of 1975, which set out a programme of engagement with and reform in the Soviet bloc calculated to open it up and transform it in the long term.

Neo-conservative theorists in Washington believe Helsinki provides a blueprint for transforming the Middle East, using a liberated Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the region. But critics say the policy is cripplingly unilateral. Democracy cannot be imposed by military intervention. And the "Greater Middle East" is not nearly as cohesive as the Soviet bloc conceived in Cold War terms.

But if it is seen through the lens of terrorism and oil resources it may look more of a geopolitical entity. Such suspicions are increased by the US desire to involve NATO in the initiative, to offer security, disaster relief and support in combating illegal trade in drugs and weapons.

Prior to the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin this summit was expected to claim ownership of regional reform and respond positively to the string of summits to be held in the summer.

After the assassination Arab leaders are much less willing to do so, not least in light of the latest reports that Ariel Sharon is seeking US guarantees to support Israeli annexation of some of the larger West Bank settlements in return for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.

In mid-2002 the United Nations Development Programme published a remarkably critical report on the Arab world written by researchers from the region.

It spelled out its great problems with economic, social and political change. Half of the population is under 18, with few or no opportunities for employment. Women suffer discrimination, and educational facilities lag far behind the developed world.

The report has had a profound effect in sharpening debate on change in the Middle East; but who are to be the agents of change? Despite some liberalisation in selected states such as Jordan, Kuwait and Oman, most of the political regimes are autocratic. Hence the difficulties in formulating the summit agenda, with some states refusing to include democracy on the agenda.

The Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, is quoted as saying: "If we open the door completely before the people there will be chaos." Others are deeply suspicious of US motives. "As long as Sharon is killing civilians and demolishing houses I won't listen to the US on democracy," says Taher al-Masri, an official appointed by the Arab League to formulate proposals on reform. They are widely seen as part of a plan to assert control over the region in such a way as to protect Israeli interests and ensure access to oil.

Worries about the long-term rise in oil prices coincided this week with the anniversary of the Iraq war and the horrendous images from Fallujah of US civilians being killed and dismembered. It is a reminder of the contradictory nature of US policy towards the region.

How plausible is it to promote democracy when access to oil and strategic resources has depended on manipulating autocratic governments? Who would be the beneficiaries of a democratisation which brought Islamic governments to power?

Among the unspoken reasons for the US intervention in Iraq was a fear that Saddam Hussein would be the beneficiary of any political and social implosion in Saudi Arabia, where most of the al-Qaeda leaders come from. He would then control oil resources crucial for the west's development. It is an open question whether the war has destabilised the region even more than he would have done.

One way or another its consequences must be dealt with. That is why the alternative plans being put forward by the EU merit close attention. The Irish presidency has put a lot of work into them. If politics is about contingency planning it makes great sense to anticipate change in the Middle East in this way by seeking to harness it constructively.