Last update - 00:00 31/07/2007
Rice, Gates win no new pledge of Arab help in stabilizing Iraq
By The Associated Press
The United States won no specific new promises of Arab help for Iraq after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with Arab leaders in Egypt on Tuesday in an 11th-hour effort to get their assistance in helping the struggling country's fledgling government survive sectarian strife and political infighting.
At the same time, the U.S. officials want Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to use financial pressure on Iran as a way of discouraging its nuclear ambitions.
At the meeting, held in the Red Sea resort town Sharm el-Sheik, Iraq's Arab neighbors repeated a general pledge to promote stability in Iraq, torn by more than four years of war and bitter sectarian divisions that have killed thousands and driven far more from their homes.
"I think we know what the obligations of the neighbors are," Rice said, adding that Egypt and other U.S. allies are working to meet past promises of relief of Iraq's heavy international debt, additional foreign aid and help tamping down violence inside Iraq.
At a press conference with her Egyptian host, Rice pointed to no fresh commitments from the Arabs. A statement issued following a nine-nation meeting promised only to continue to support Iraq and expand their financial and political support, and restated a general commitment to blocking would-be terrorists and financing that supports them from entering Iraq.
"The ... commitment was always to help a united Iraq to reach that point of full stability, and that we have been trying to do over the last four years," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said following the joint meeting.
U.S. President George W. Bush's top diplomatic and military managers have a tough assignment to convince skeptical, mostly Sunni-led Arab nations that they have more to lose if Iraq fails than they stand to gain by waiting until the U.S. leaves or Bush's term ends.
For their part, Arab countries may be worried that escalating opposition in the U.S. to the war in Iraq may signal a declining commitment to security in the region.
"We have also been calling for the noninterference of any foreign powers into Iraq," Aboul Gheit said. "That is something we would renew."
Unity against Iran is not a hard sell. But Washington has had far less success in rallying Arab help for Iraq that goes much beyond words.
Arab money and diplomatic support has lagged behind Europe's, and some of Iraq's neighbors quietly tolerate, or may secretly support, attacks inside Iraq. Some of the violence targets U.S. forces and some of it Shiite militias and neighborhoods.
Hours before Rice and Gates embarked on their diplomatic mission, the Bush administration announced Monday a proposed U.S. arms package to Arab nations worth more than $20 billion. The sophisticated weaponry, according to U.S. officials, would strengthen relatively moderate Persian Gulf governments against extremist regimes and ideologies, chief among them Iran.
Rice said the arms deal, along with an aid package for Israel and Egypt, was not a trade-off for assistance but the fruit of years of partnership and a recognition of the region's strategic importance. Although she did not mention oil, that is the region's chief export and the origin of the historical U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, one of the recipients of the U.S. arms initiative.
"We have the same goals in this region concerning security and stability," Rice said. "There isn't a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to ... U.S. interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see."
Gates said key goals for the trip included reaffirming that the United States will continue to have a strong military presence in the region. Although a buildup in U.S. forces has raised the number of troops in Iraq to nearly 160,000, pressure is mounting in the U.S. for redeploying troops if the political and security situation there does not improve by fall.
U.S. officials want to reassure all of the countries that the policies that the president pursues in Iraq have had and will continue to have regional stability and security as a very high priority, Gates said.
Congress must approve the arms deal. Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Monday that the weapons should be defensive and added that other nations would step in to sell arms in the region if the U.S. did not.
Specific figures for Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were not final and will be settled in the coming weeks, the State Department said.
The new sales to Arab countries will be balanced with a more than 25 percent increase in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years, enabling it to hold its military edge over neighbors with which it has no peace deal.