Mideast Roundup

May 9, 2003

US Deadline Is Fast Running out

Newsflash for Bashar Assad: You've got five days before a US ultimatum expires.

That may all come as a bit of surprise to the inexperienced Syrian president. After all, things seemed to be looking up during US secretary of state Colin Powell's visit to Damascus last weekend. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that not a voice was raised in anger nor were any harsh US demands made during Powell's conversations with Assad and foreign minister Farouq al-Shara. The US visitor merely said unemotionally that he was there to clarify a few points. His hosts were not unduly perturbed.

Reality should have come crashing down when it was time for Powell to fly out of Damascus to Beirut. Escorted by Shara and a bevy of senior Syrian officials, the Americans walked toward the US plane. Suddenly, a US official without a word handed a sheet of paper to a Syrian colleague. It contained a complete list of US demands. Witnesses told our sources the Syrian official was dumbfounded.

"Why are you giving me this document?" he asked.

"It's a list of demands to be carried out to the letter," was the reply. "You have 10 days to comply, starting from Saturday (May 3) afternoon, when we leave Beirut."

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report the document conveyed a warning to Assad that American patience and consideration for his efforts to stand well in Syria and the Arab world had run their course. This was followed by a named list of all the top Iraqi political, military, financial and scientific officials and senior Al Qaeda men who fled Iraq and crossed into Syria. The United States demanded their handover without delay.

The Americans went on to demand Syria's immediate troop withdrawal from Lebanon - a detailed timetable would serve at this stage. Finally, Assad was reminded that in addition to Washington's new demands, a couple of former requirements raised in mid-April had not yet been met. They included the dismantling and destruction of Syria's own weapons of mass destruction - including medium- and long-rang missiles - and the closure of all Palestinian headquarters and training camps, especially those used by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Terrorists harbored in those facilities were to be handed over to the United States, the document said. New additions to the list of wanted men were the Damascus-based Hamas masterminds who orchestrated the suicide bombing by British bombers at Mike's Place, a jazz club near the US embassy in Tel Aviv, on April 30. (More on this subject will be found in separate <#4>article on Saudi Arabia in this issue).

Syria was also told to cut its political and military links with the Hizballah terror group, seize the Lebanese terror group's heavy weaponry, such as missiles and rocket launchers, and remove them from Lebanon out of the Hizballah's reach.

In his conversation with Assad, Powell ranged widely over unresolved past issues between Israel and Syria to be addressed before progress was possible towards peace negotiations. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources, who spoke with officials familiar with the conversation's content, Powell urged Assad to provide information on Israelis missing in action and prisoners of war in Syria and Lebanon: three Israeli soldiers have been unaccounted for more than twenty years since the 1982 Israeli-Syrian tank battle at Sultan Yakoub in Lebanon; the Israeli air force navigator Ron Arad who baled out over Lebanon in 1986 and was never heard of again; the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped on the Lebanese border in 2000. Syria must arrange for the return of Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli businessman kidnapped in Europe three years ago by Hizballah. Syria and Hizballah accused Tannenbaum of being a Mossad agent. Israel denied this.

The time is past for evasions and tricks, Powell warned the Syrian ruler. Missing and captive Israeli servicemen and civilians must be handed back without delay; the Iraq War had brought a new reality to the Middle East and delaying tactics would no longer be tolerated, whether on issues affecting Israel or Syrian-US matters.

In Beirut, the same scenario was played out a few hours later. Polite palaver with Lebanese Emil Lahoud was followed by a written list of Washington's no-nonsense demands:

A.
The handover to the United States of any Iraqi arms, including weapons of mass destruction hidden by Syria or any other party in Lebanese territory.

B.
The deployment in southern Lebanon of at least one-and-a-half to two army divisions, who must take over the outposts and command centers the Hizballah has strung along the border with Israel, remove the Shiite terrorists' flags flying overhead and disarm their fighters. In short, the United States wants to see the Lebanese army in full control of southern Lebanon, including the Israeli frontier region.

C.
The full disarmament of the Hizballah as a terrorist force and its restructure as a political party.

D.
The removal of all foreign military forces from Lebanon, including Syrian and Iranian troops.

More dilly-dallying

Lebanese action on this five-point ultimatum depends on Syria playing its part first. Thus far, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military sources report that neither Assad nor his close advisers and Syrian army commanders have taken a single step towards meeting Washington's demands, apparently hoping to fob the Americans off with such meaningless gestures as -

1.
Instead of closing Palestinian terrorist headquarters and offices, moving them out of the center of Damascus to the less conspicuous Palestinian refugee camp at Yarmouk, north of the capital. The downtown offices of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP-GC remain open, albeit with skeleton staffs.

2.
Banning their spokesmen from Syrian television.

3.
Confining Palestinian activists to their homes between dusk and dawn by reviving a military directive enacted by his father, Hafez Assad.

Tuesday, May 15, the Bush administration and Syria will be faced with the end of a deadline. Will the Syrian president opt for defiance? Or -

Take a series of last minute steps indicating a willingness to gradually comply, just as he did when he began pushing some of Saddam's wanted officials over to American forces in Iraq;

Order the Lebanese government to start meeting some US demands and so create the appearance that Lebanon, rather than Syria, was knuckling under to US dictates.

Follow the advice he has received from Britain and France to turn the situation to his advantage by instigating a political reform program starting with political and military leadership reshuffles. The Europeans would then back Assad up when he argued that Washington's far-reaching demands were placing him in danger of a putsch and that he was forced to reform his government before dealing with US demands.

One of the problems with Assad, apart from his inexperience, is that no one ever tells him anything straight from the shoulder. His close advisers say what they think he wants to hear. Brass tacks are beyond him. Harsh truths are screened. If Washington decides to get tough with Syria, it will undoubtedly proceed in stages, spaced out to give the Syrian president a chance to register what is happening.

On the other hand, he or his advisers are wily enough to come up with a stratagem for deflecting American ire and putting off an uncomfortable deadline. Damascus has suddenly developed a keen interest in peace talks with Israel over the Golan Heights. The scrap of land lost almost forty years ago is not really of compelling interest to the Syrian president. But Washington's pressing demands on other issues could be placed on the table of peace negotiations, Assad would buy time to dodge round the awkward US ultimatum by claiming it was part and parcel of a complex negotiating process for peace and required patience.

How will Washington react?

Since no public ultimatum was issued, Washington is free to extend its deadline. That is one option. Another is to tighten economic pressure on Syria, which is already smarting from the cut-off of Iraqi oil that flowed into the Iraqi-Syrian pipeline bringing an annual $1.2 billion in revenue. More economic punishment could destabilize Assad's regime.

The US administration could alternatively opt for military or covert strike action against certain Iraqi or terrorist targets located in Syria and Lebanon to warn Syrian and Lebanese leaders that more punishment would result from further non-compliance. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report that Iraq war commander General Tommy Franks, who also leads the global war on terrorism, has collected an expeditionary force in northern Iraq. An advance force of between 12 and 20 reconnaissance, intelligence and special forces troops are already inside Syria marking out and tracking potential targets. One preferred target would be an unconventional weapons site in Syria, an attack which would flash a strong signal to Iran, Middle East terrorist organizations and Saddam's supporters in Iraq that US forces are fully prepared to extend their scope of operations if need be.

Next week, therefore, will be decision time in Washington for the next chapter of its Middle East campaign. By then, secretary of state Colin Powell will be back from his swing round Israel, Palestinian territory and Arab capitals - assuming his trip is not cancelled. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources have picked up increasing signs of a terrorist counter-attack in preparation to spike Washington's anti-terror strategy. To this end, the terrorists still operating freely within the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Lebanon are planning a particularly vicious attack on American and Israeli targets.


Iran

Iran Bids for Two Nuclear Bombs from North Korea

Iran has offered North Korea cash for the purchase of a complete nuclear bomb at the earliest possible date with the option of a second one within six to eight months of taking possession of bomb number one. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources revealing this report that the two governments are secretly in the process of negotiating the sale, which was also a focal subject on the unpublished agenda of last month's US-North Korea talks in Beijing.

US assistant secretary of state James Kelly demanded a North Korean promise to break off its negotiations with Iran. According to our sources, the delegation from Pyongyang simply replied its members had no authority to discuss the issue. The talks subsequently petered out.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Teheran report that a bitter debate has been raging inside the Iranian leadership since February when it was realized that nothing would stop the US invasion of Iraq.

The faction supporting Iran's hardline spiritual leader Ali Khamenei argued that an American victory being a certainty, it was up to Tehran to acquire weapons capable of deterring the Americans from making Iran their next target. This group was led by Expediency Council secretary Mohssen Rezai, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the current commander of the Guards Asgar-Ovladi Mosalaman, their deputy commander Mohammad Bagher Zol-Ghadr and the head of the Islamic coalition, one of Iran's top 10 top clerics, Ali Meshkini. They claimed Iran cannot afford to wait until it builds its own nuclear bomb - Iran and US intelligence agree that will not happen until the end of 2005. They advocated an off-the-shelf purchase because the United States would anyway not let Iran make its own bomb. Washington would strike Iran's nuclear facilities during the countdown to the completion of a home-made device. Furthermore, Iran had saved up about $5 million from the last three years' oil revenues earmarking it for nuclear armament. If it is not used to purchase a bomb, the money will go to waste.

The opposite argument was advanced by the reformist faction led by Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, who contended that Tehran had better tone down its nuclear militancy as its only chance of keeping Iran's atomic facilities at Natanz (first reported in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 82 and 85 last year) out of the US and International Atomic Energy Agency's spotlight. Iran could then quietly bring its own nuclear program to completion without precipitating an American attack.

In any case, they argued, by the time the US and IAEA bureaucracy gets into gear and Washington goes through all the procedures at the United Nations - this time, Washington will not wish to antagonize the world body after the severe frictions set up by the Iraq war - Iran will have consummated its nuclear weapons program.

The upshot of the dispute was a decision in Teheran to enter into negotiations with North Korea for the purchase of a bomb - or two.

Tackling Iranian hardliners on their home front, the United States this week managed to raise a majority of Iranian parliamentarians, members of the Majlis, to put their signatures to an open letter firing a powerful broadside at the regime in Tehran and its repressive and anti-American policies.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources report that the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA and every congressman or senator with a connection in any Iranian expatriate community fired every weapon in their collective diplomatic arsenal to round up the signatures in time to publish the letter on Wednesday May 7.

Three important principles were laid out over the signatures of 153 out of 290 deputies:

1.
The Iranian regime will merit legitimacy only after narrowing the gap between it and the people and by reviewing the inefficient methods of governance that led to its failures of policy.
Our sources note that never before has any parliamentary publication used the term "failures" in reference to the Islamic government in Tehran.

2.
Legitimacy of the Iranian regime is conditional on the promulgation of two laws: One, providing for electoral reform and another for the expansion of presidential powers.
Our sources explain the aim of this motion as being to place all foreign policy-making within the exclusive province of the president.

3.
The reformist faction urges the government to take advantage of US threats by turning them into opportunities for making terms with Washington and effective necessary reforms.

The US lobbyists hoped for 180 Iranian deputies to sign the letter. But even after a score or so parliamentarians developed cold feet, a majority remained. It is therefore seen in Washington as a triumph and an important step towards regime change in Tehran generated by domestic forces.


Iran - 2

America Cuts a Would-be Shia Leader down to Size

The United States and the most powerful militant Shiite group in Iraq, the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution in Iraq, could be on the quits.

On Monday, General Jay Garner, the de facto US governor of 23 million Iraqis, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US administration's liaison with Iraqi opposition groups, had a little chat with SCIRI's Sayed Abdelaziz al-Hakim, head of the group's radical martyrdom wing, about his brother, Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, SCIRI's supreme leader. Laying down the provisional law in Baghdad, the two Americans told Abdelaziz in no uncertain terms the United States would not allow Mohammed Bakir to return to Iraq. SCIRI, they said, is a radical religious group advocating the killing of US soldiers and secretly organizing insurrection and suicide attacks against American forces.

Khalilzad showed Abdelaziz his cards up front - reams of secret documents proving that Iran recently poured $150 million into SCIRI's coffers along with pledges of more money to come. Some of the lucre was meant to grease the palms of Shiite tribal leaders and Shiite clerics in Najef, Karbala, Baghdad and Basra to persuade them to do Iran's bidding.

The United States is convinced that Iranian agents who infiltrated Iraq in recent weeks joined with Saddam Hussein's secret agents to organize the shooting attacks against US soldiers in Falluja, assaults that drew retaliatory fire that cut down civilians and raised anti-US sentiment in Iraq and elsewhere in the Moslem world.

According to US intelligence officials, nearly 20,000 Iranian agents, many of them Iraqi members of the Badr Brigades and others Iraqis who fled as refugees to Iran over the past 20 years, have come home.

Garner and Khalilzad went so far as to call Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim an Iranian agent tasked with creating a Shiite state in Iraq. Abdelaziz's denials fell on deaf ears. When he denied that Iran had organized massive Shiite demonstrations during religious ceremonies last month, Khalilzad countered by noting that some of the self-flagellation rituals performed by the demonstrators were Iranian, not Iraqi practices.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, the number two man in the Iranian leadership, told several of his associates this week that the United States sent a formal warning to Iran to stop inciting the Shiites at such ceremonies. An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report.

Refusing Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim permission to return to Iraq was tantamount to a U.S. declaration of war on SCIRI, which had been led to understand that as the biggest Iraqi Shi'ite group it would be guaranteed a significant role in any future Iraqi coalition government.

The two other Shi'ite parties vying for power are al-Amal al-Islami -- weakened by 20 years in exile -- and Hizbad-Dava, an extremely radical faction that has effectively become a part of SCIRI.

Hakim realized he would have to change his plans after being blackballed by the Americans. DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned that he intends to step down as SCIRI's political leader, hoping to pave the way for his return to Iraq - though not in the grand style he had hoped for.

He had originally planned a triumphant return to his homeland. For more than six months, Bakr has been plotting his home-coming ceremonies on a scale last seen back in 1977 when Ayatollah Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran from exile in France. Hakim was to have traveled through the main Shiite cities in southeastern Iraq before heading to Najef and Karbala, where he intended to establish his official base. He planned on living in Baghdad to be close to US administrators and the new center of Iraqi power.


Iraq War Fallout

Saudi Princes Shake in their Sandals

The princes of Saudi Arabia are obsessively following every tittle and nuance of the argument going back and forth between defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld - backed from the wings by vice president Richard Cheney - and secretary of state Colin Powell over how long and how deeply Washington should be involved in Iraq's future. Of burning interest to the watchers in Riyadh are clues on the fate of the US guarantee to Saudi security, the next moves in regard to Iraq's oil resources, its place in OPEC and the prospective form of government in Baghdad.

How Secure is US Security Guarantee?

Rumsfeld inaugurated his first triumphant Gulf war with an announcement that the United States would evacuate its military presence from Saudi Arabia and move its 100 warplanes and forward air command out of the Prince Sultan air base by the end of August. The decision was mutually agreed under a new accord the only section of which published allowed the base to remain available for emergencies and military exercises. But the key issue of the longstanding US guarantee of Saudi security was not publicly addressed, Does it still stand? Do the Saudis want it to? Both parties seem to be carefully skirting this loaded issue.

Seen from the Cheney-Rumsfeld perspective, the guarantee should be relegated to the dustbin now that the epicenter of American regional interests can be relocated from Saudi Arabia to Iraq and bases provided by acquiescent local hosts such as Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. This shift would go down well with Americans who since the September 11 terrorist attacks - most of whose perpetrators turned out to be Saudi nationals - have urged the administration to turn a cold shoulder to an ungrateful oil kingdom.

Another consideration would be the fear that American soldiers and defense personnel are under constant threat from terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. Last week, a US defense contractor's representative was shot and injured at the King Abdul Aziz naval base in the eastern port city of Al Jubail. The assailant was described as wearing the uniform of a Saudi naval officer. Just before the attack, the US embassy quietly warned the 30,000-40,000 American citizens in the kingdom against terrorist threat, while Saudi interior minister Prince Naif denied knowledge of any such threat.

However, on Wednesday May 7, a far more serious outbreak of violence occurred, this one directed against the Saudi regime. A large gang linked to al Qaeda attempted to assassinate a senior Saudi official on the streets of Riyadh. In the subsequent shootout, both sides suffered loss of life and nineteen members of the gang - 17 of them Saudis - got away. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources, this is the fourth street battle to take place with Islamic terrorists in the Saudi capital in two months.
The Saudi interior minister admitted a series of terror attacks had been foiled. A search of the gang's hideout turned up 55 hand grenades, 377 kilograms of explosives, Kalashnikovs, ammo, cash, travel documents and disguises.

The photos of the 19 wanted men were published and the public asked to assist in their capture. Publication of this kind of sensitive intelligence is unprecedented in Saudi Arabia and an appeal to the public unheard of. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources account for this uncharacteristic conduct as a sign of desperation. Whether or not it was meant as a warning to the hunted terrorists is less clear, but US intelligence has been aware for some time that al Qaeda and its linked fundamentalist groups are deeply embedded in Saudi society and their infiltration of Saudi armed forces is more extensive than suspected. Even the handful of American defense personnel staying on in the kingdom after the general withdrawal of US forces will be at great risk.

Cheney and Rumsfeld are by and large dead set against crown prince Abdullah whom they view as innately anti-American. The decision to pull American forces out of the kingdom is tantamount to downgrading its standing in the United States. The two US officials are determined to prevent Abdullah from ascending the throne and have been in dialogue with his half-brother Sultan and his faction in recent months. Abdullah knows where he stands in that particular Washington corridor of power and is trying to pick his way around this landmine.

Saudi financing of Hamas wins a black mark in Washington

But Washington has a second black mark against the Saudi regime. For the second time in two years, the Americans have pinned down an Islamic terror group fully funded by Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian fundamentalist Hamas, and are preparing to extend their global war on terror to this group.

Riyadh denies its regular stipend to Hamas is spent on terrorism, protesting that it supports sick funds, charities and schools. Washington had found evidence that Saudi cash infusions sustain the medressas established in Damascus by the Hamas and Jihad Islami, which are beginning to take the place of the religious academies al Qaeda ran in Peshawar to indoctrinate its followers. Two early students of the Damascus medressas, the British terrorists Asif Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, were recruited by Syrian-based Hamas spotters and given their mission of blowing up the US embassy in Tel Aviv or a crowded Israeli location - which they did on April 30, killing three Israelis and injuring 60 at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv.

Before Powell went to Damascus last Saturday, May 3, Washington asked crown prince Abdullah to persuade Assad to cooperate with US demands and avert a showdown. The prince's aides talked to Assad but not seriously. Abdullah was ready to invite the Syrian president for a visit, but encountered a lack of response.

At the same time, despite the demerits accumulated by the Saudi de facto ruler, Rumsfeld though covered with laurels is in no position to dictate policy on the delicate question of US-Saudi defense relations and the US guarantee for Saudi Arabia. The decisive voice will come from the White House after the president has canvassed his advisers.

In any case, even if the guarantee comes online, the strife-torn Saudi princes are not of one mind over whether or not they want to log on. The pro-American defense minister Prince Sultan would like to see American troops staying on. But he like Rumsfeld is not free to make that decision on his own and must defer to Abdullah, whose views are not entirely clear. His rivals in Riyadh cite him as opposed to the invitation to American forces to take up positions in the kingdom in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait and triggered the first Gulf War. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Saudi experts, Abdullah was widely misunderstood. He did not object to the US military presence so much as to Washington taking this action without prior consultation with Saudi rulers. In any case, the fissure in Saudi-US relations effected by the 9/ll calamity gave the crown prince a good shaking. Since then, he appears far more amenable to close military relations with the United States, although Washington remains to be convinced that this change of heart is genuine.

But Abdullah can no more force his will on his government than his half brother Sultan. The way the kingdom is run, both must round up a consensus among the senior princes. For the time being, both are keeping their powder dry and watching to see how the Americans handle the complexities of Iraq's reconstruction and their impact on the region before deciding whether to press forward or back away.

Saudi oil primacy threatened

The Saudi royal house is even more on tenterhooks over US plans for developing Iraqi oil. It is beginning to transpire that Iraq could double its production capacity to 5-6 m bpd over the next six to seven years. During that period, American geologists would carry out surveys of Iraq oil reserves with a view to their exploitation from the end of this decade. The Saudis see their doom writ large before then, from the moment Iraqi output climbs to the 4 million bpd mark. From then on the Saudi role as the world's biggest oil producer will go into decline, as will also its standing as world's major holder of spare capacity against the bad times.

Here too Rumsfeld and certain American business leaders are not averse to distancing the United States from Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, the defense secretary never echoed the mantra often repeated by President George W. Bush, Powell and British premier Tony Blair that Iraqi oil must be used to serve the needs of the Iraqi people. Rumsfeld wants to develop Iraq's potential to reduce American and global dependence on Saudi oil. Even more, he aspires to transform Iraq into a showcase for American Middle East strategic development, a central oil reservoir at the service of America's global interests and a primary source of financing for Iraq's own reconstruction and for defraying the costs of the US presence to oversee Iraq's transformation.

The last thing the US defense secretary wants is to have Iraq re-admitted to the Organization Petroleum Exporting Countries. For that very reason, Saudi voices are clamoring for Iraq's return to the cartel where its production would be controlled by the quota system and Saudi Arabia's primacy of the oil market escape diminution.

The divergent voices in Riyadh over this issue have more to do with politics and the balance of power in the royal house than profit and loss factors. The conservative-leaning crown prince Abdullah would happily go along with Rumsfeld's aspirations because he wants to reduce the kingdom's dependence on a single source of revenue. For one thing, his foremost rivals in the royal house, the Sudeiri brothers led by the ailing King Fahd and defense minister Sultan, exert a virtually monopolistic control of the nation's oil industry. For another, Abdullah has fought for years to limit Saudi society's exposure to Western society and its ways. Yet he also advocates a fairer distribution of wealth and the broadening of the country's employment base that would reduce the 30-40% unemployment rate among men by opening up job opportunities outside the oil industry to Saudis who would take over from the ubiquitous imported workers - especially in industry, business and commerce. Abdullah sees in this gravitational shift a means of undercutting the Sudeiris' power base.

He tried to achieve this three years ago by opening the country's energy resources to foreign investments, making the announcement in Washington. Upon his return home, he was forced to backtrack under pressure from oil minister Ali al-Naimi - a Sudeiri appointee - and limit the multibillion dollar offer to exploration and production in the gas sector alone. Even so, contracts have yet to be signed with the international firms who won stakes in the gas-rich regions. These delays have held up Abdullah's hopes of a lever against the Sudeiri energy monopoly and gaining enough clout to force the key industry to reforms.

Saudi Shiites Find Their Voice

After standing up to half a century of pressure to give ordinary Saudis a say in government, the princes are far from eager for a full-blown democracy to develop next door in Iraq. So far, they have got away with marginal concessions. A decade ago, they created a Majlis Shoura (and unelected consultative council) the closest approximation to a parliament they were willing to go. But the same statute perpetuates the rule of the House of Saud and limits the council's powers to consultative functions. Nonetheless, parts of the population never before represented did gain a voice in government, although that will not be good enough if a government representing all parts of the Iraqi nation rises in Baghdad.

First signs of the outside and domestic pressures in store have come from Saudi Shiites under the influence of the broad prerogatives the Americans are preparing to confer on their Iraqi coreligionists. On April 23, the Washington Post ran an open letter signed by 13 prominent Saudi Shiite clerics celebrating Saddam Hussein's downfall and calling on Iraqis to embrace the path of dialogue and unite behind their national religious leaders. Foreign occupation must end and Iraqis left to govern themselves freely and independently, said the letter.

The subtext of this statement was read correctly in Riyadh as a Saudi Shiite cry for attention.

The Shiite minority - no more than 7-8 percent of Saudi Arabia's largely Sunni Wahhabi population of 14 million - has plenty to complain about. Its leaders often petition the government in Riyadh for equal rights in the distribution of national wealth, recognition for their religious leaders and ritual laws, freedom of religious practice and an end to discriminatory employment policies. They also claim a bigger share in the oil revenues produced by the oil wells of the Eastern Provinces where most of the Shiite population lives.

Usually, their grievances are brushed aside and some of their ringleaders arrested. But since the Iraq War, the Shiites are beginning to be heeded. Although no real remedial action for their problems has been promised, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Riyadh say Saudi rulers cannot pretend to be blind to the new liberties the Americans are handing out to the Shiites of Iraq and the country's ethnic and religious minorities.

According to our Saudi experts, Abdullah may be the first to bend to some of their demands.

He also believes that in doing so he will serve his own interests and enlarge his popular support. However little he gives, his lenience towards the Shiites will compare favorably with the repressive treatment meted out to them for two decades by the Sudeiri governor of the Eastern provinces, King Fahd's son Mahmud.

As things stand today, the infighting at court over the Iraq War's import for Saudi policies in a wide range of fields has only just begun. It is likely to gain force as the Iraqi scene fights clear of the muddle of transition and the argument within the Bush team over America's Iraq strategy is resolved. The more liberal elements in the kingdom are likely to be encouraged by Iraq's transformation to speak with a louder voice. However, after giving them the first innings, the dominant conservatives and clerical establishment will not miss the chance of hitting back. The ding dong over Saudi national policies will in the final reckoning depend on the balance of forces in the royal house and be determined through the traditional accommodations among the senior princes.


Washington's Global Options

At End of Road, Bush Team Speaks with One Voice

Since drawing a line on the combat phase of the Iraq War, the US administration has slackened the pace of its global policy-making. Instead of making decisions on the gallop and acting on the instant, the Bush team is more inclined now to leave its options loose and apply modular solutions at greater leisure to variable situations. The modular approach looks like being applied to the Middle East and Persian Gulf, for example, in line with some of the strategies developed for the Far East and the Indian subcontinent.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources and experts discern this approach in seven key global arenas: Iran, Iran, North Korea, China, Israel, Syria and the Palestinians.

Iraq: The White House, National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon have decided in unison on changes in the US troop deployment in Iraq. By the end of the year, the force will be cut by about half - from 125,000 to 60,000-70,000 - and concentrated in the Baghdad region and the sensitive cluster of Shiite cities, Najef, Karbala, al-Kut, al Hillal, Nasirieh and perhaps al-Amarah near the Iranian border. An additional US troop presence will be maintained in five or six Iraqi air bases, Talil in the south, Rashid - Baghdad's military airfield - Habaniyeh, west of Baghdad and H2 in western Iraq near the city of al-Rubatah, ready for action in any contingency inside Iraq and beyond its borders. At those bases, American air and special forces will be deployed ready to strike as needed in surrounding regions from the Caspian Sea in the north down to Saudi Arabia and Iran in the south.

Europe: Carving Iraq into three military zones, each policed by the troops of a different country, provides Washington with a variety of options - some in distant places. The only non-American party sure of its post-war role is the UK, which has been granted military control of most of southern and southeastern Iraq administered from its headquarters in Basra. But the British lack sufficient forces in-theater to extend the rule of law and order to those cities, the strategic Shaat al-Arab waterway and the southern oil fields. They have therefore entered into fast-paced negotiations with Italy, Spain and the Netherlands for military forces to beef up British contingents in southern Iraq.

The isolation of France, Germany and Russia is also underscored by denying these anti-war governments any part of the European role in post-war Iraq. Further underlining the trio's exclusion is Washington's approach to a group of East European countries led by Poland, as well as India and Pakistan to undertake security duties in western Iraq and some parts of the north.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly has discovered that Washington's indignation over French conduct was exacerbated by the news that, when Saddam Hussein and his family were on the point of fleeing Iraq, President Jacques Chirac ordered the French embassy in Baghdad to issue him with forty French passports. Passports issued by all European Union members give their holders the freedom to move around Europe without restriction. Washington has requested serial numbers of the passports issued to Saddam, but the French are refusing to hand them over.

Russia: The presence in Iraq of Polish, Ukrainian or Albanian military will serve to accentuate the divide between New and Old Europe drawn by Donald Rumsfeld before the war, as well as showing up Russia's reduced influence on the course of events in Iraq and the Middle East at large.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington and Moscow say Vladimir Putin's persistence in attempting to "apply the brakes" to Iraq's reconstruction and rehabilitation will only make the Bush administration even more determined to make sure Russia is denied any economic advantages in the post-war era..

That was the message that US undersecretary of state John Bolton delivered during a recent visit to Moscow. "Someone in Russian intelligence persuaded Putin that Moscow's economic and financial situation was such that it could afford to revive its contest with the United States for superpower pre-eminence," a senior US official told DEBKA-Net-Weekly. "Putin bought the thesis so completely that he started the race even before the war in Iraq. Now he can't afford to give up."

India and Pakistan: The feelers Washington put out for the deployment of Indian, Pakistani and perhaps Singaporean forces in Iraq may also be paying off. Preceded by American diplomatic efforts to bring about reconciliation between the two enemies, the initiative has resulted in a surprising relaxation of tensions between them and willingness to talk on the part of Indian prime minister Bihar Vajpayee and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.

Both leaders perceive America's war in Iraq and its reconstruction program as the first moves in their own strategic backyard - the Persian Gulf and Middle East. India and Pakistan are perfectly aware that Washington may well stage its next forays in the direction of Iran and Syria. Vajpayee and Musharraf see they would be better off mending fences, even partially, and fitting in with the Bush administration's tactics in order to have any hope of influencing them.

Turkey: The deployment of Indian or Pakistani soldiers in Iraq would tell Turkey plainly that it is being cut out of America's grand schemes because of its decision to prevent the United States from opening a northern warfront, thereby prolonging the campaign by 10 to 14 days and ultimately enabling Saddam Hussein and his sons to escape the country. For more than 50 years, Washington regarded its alliance with Turkish military commanders as the bedrock of US strategic policy in the region. Sending troops from another Muslim country into Iraq will show Ankara the United States has strategic alternatives. It will also drop a heavy hint to Turkish generals that change at home - however drastic - will be necessary to restore their country's pride of place in US strategic thinking.

Israel and the Palestinians: Change is also called for in regard to this conflict.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Israeli and Palestinian sources report that US expectations are receding of secretary of state Colin Powell being able to achieve a breakthrough in his talks Sunday, May 11, with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. US officials seriously doubt whether Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, and his internal security minister Mohammed Dahlan are capable of nullifying Yasser Arafat's control over key Palestinian intelligence and security services - and through them over Palestinian terrorism.

The US administration no longer entertains much hope of Abu Mazen and Dahlan going to war against the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, especially in the Gaza Strip.

As a result, a fresh option is being weighed in Washington. It is to bypass the top Palestinian leadership by inviting Palestinian businessmen or academics for talks in Washington to consider establishing a US civil administration in Palestinian Authority areas on the model to be set up in Iraq. Several senior US administration sources told DEBKA-Net-Weekly that this may be the only way left for scotching terrorism and attaining an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that would lead to a Palestinian state. An American administration in Palestinian areas would act as guarantor for a Palestinian security force that would fight terrorism, the only mechanism capable of reconstructing the Palestinian Authority in such a way as to assure Israel that terrorism can end. Sharon would then be able to consent to the painful concessions sought by Washington, such as the uprooting of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Rumors flew about in Jerusalem and Ramallah on Thursday, May 8, that Powell intended announcing the creation of a permanent US supervisory team headed by state department official Richard Erdman, a former political counselor at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, to monitor the implementation of the "road map" to peace.

The division of labor within the US government in carrying out the "open option" policy is clear. Powell will be in charge of developing diplomatic options; Rumsfeld will oversee the military ones. At least that's the picture from Washington. The scene in the field is a bit different. Meanwhile, Powell will arrive in the region on a softening-up mission with all sides aware that the man with the big stick, Rumsfeld, is poised to pounce should the going get tough.

The same scenario is being played out in the dangerous nuclear game involving Iran, North Korea and China.


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

4 May: The suicide terror attack at the Blues caf&Mac218; Mike's Place near the US Embassy in Tel Aviv last Wednesday, April 30, was made possible by grave security lapses - British and Israeli.

British security and intelligence services have paid in the past - and will continue to pay long and dear - for their government's policy of giving extremist Muslims free rein in the country, a policy dating back to the 1950s. When Washington pointed out the dangers posed by this policy, London explained that their presence facilitated the penetration by the British services of extremist groups and enabled them to nip terrorist outbreaks in the bud.

In the last two years, since British Muslim fundamentalists began joining al Qaeda this "intelligence" argument lost its credibility. It is no coincidence that at least three of the most vicious terrorist attacks in the last two years were perpetrated by radical Muslims who worshiped, studied and joined activities centering on the Finsbury Park mosque. Britain's security service knew about the pair of British bombers who later attacked Mike's Place and their links with Islamic extremists but did not place them under surveillance. According to London's "intelligence" argument, British security on the spot should have been able to uncover the plans afoot there and acted to prevent them. That this did not happen lays Britain - and not just Israel - open to the threat of terror.

Some US terror experts suggest that they have turned the tables on British intelligence. Instead of accessing the militant groups, MI5 and MI6 have themselves been penetrated.

Because of this suspicion, the Americans denied the British any real military or intelligence role in the Afghan War. Today, they take into account that the British government has not abandoned its indulgent asylum policy and favors a pro-Arab stance in the Middle East - even after the Iraq War and even after three British terrorists linked to al Qaeda gained logistical support and a Palestinian jumping off or training base in the Gaza Strip in the last two years. There, in 2001, the "shoe bomber" was instructed in the craft of blowing up airliners and in April 2003, Hanif and Khan followed in his explosive footsteps. Palestinian security would scarcely have missed the two British terrorists' arrival. At best, their plans were known: at worst, the local Palestinian services extended the two British terrorists a helping hand for preparing their operation and moving in and out of Israel. In any case, Fatah and Hamas publicized their role in what was clearly a combined operation.

This is the point at which Israeli and British security must share responsibility for failing to pick up on the terror conspiracy in motion.

Some Israeli media echo the British campaign that glorifies the actions of the "foreign peace activists" who provide armed Palestinians with human shields against Israel counter-terror operations. During the first Palestinian uprising in 1987, scores of British pro-Palestinian welfare workers entered the Gaza Strip, most of them Oxfam volunteers. Many converged on the strategic Rafah sector. The few Israeli security experts who took note of their presence remarked that the worst excesses of the uprising erupted in the very areas frequented by the British anti-war activists. Sixteen years later, the "peace activists" are back in the Rafah region close to the Israel-Egyptian frontier and the arms smuggling tunnels. Since they arrived, this sector is fast becoming one of the most militarily sensitive of Israel's many fighting fronts, no less than the Israel-Lebanese frontier. As the presence of "peace activists" expands, Israeli-Palestinian clashes gain in ferociousness and the death toll rises.

Hanif and Sharif posed as peace activists to pass between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Another gaping hole in Israeli security was used by the two terrorists when they smuggled unknown explosive substances into Israel for use in their bomb belts. These substances may have passed through Israeli security screening at two border crossings without being detected. Even carried in a Koran, they should have been found.

7 May: From the intelligence treasure trove unearthed in Baghdad, America has distributed to its war allies some materials relevant to their national security. In addition, the administration has secretly handed over to various Middle East and Persian Gulf governments the names of ministers and public figures who were handsomely rewarded by Saddam Hussein for supporting his case in deliberations at the United Nations, other international bodies and inter-Arab forums. Washington was given to understand that these public officials would be held to account by their governments. This process has started quietly in Qatar and Jordan, where our intelligence sources expect overnight resignations of senior cabinet members.

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