What Arabs want for Iran's image

Abdul Allah Al Ashaal, an Egyptian columnist for Al Hayat daily, wrote that the Arab people have formed an image about Iran throughout the last three decades and have an idea of how they wished to see Iran. After the Islamic revolution, Iran was seen from different perspectives: it is quite often acknowledged for its support to the resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine, associated with its defiant policies  towards Washington and considered a destabiliser of peace and security.

These views also reflect the official attitudes of Arab governments towards Iran. They would like to see a positive rapprochement between Iran and the US and an open dialogue between the Islamic republic and the Arab world. "It is needless to count the advantages the Arab world could draw from conducting dialogue with Iran because excluding Iran would likely affect Arab interests. Yet any dialogue requires two prerequisites: it should stem from a genuine interest by both parties and  Arabs should have clear and viable concepts and not conditions that may abort any potential negotiations."

The Palestinian-owned, London-based Al Quds wrote in its leader that Senator George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, voiced President Barack Obama' s will to consider a comprehensive peace in the Middle East as his top priority. "The peace plan must see a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on two peacefully coexisting independent states," Mitchell was reported as saying by the paper.

Yet the US administration's plan will highly likely be faced with  opposition by Benjamin Netanyahu's government ,which  rejects the two-state proposal and advocates instead  building more settlements in Arab occupied lands. "This contradiction of views between the new US and Israeli governments may lead to a conflict of wills. As such, Obama's government might either succumb to Israeli intransigence  and therefore abandon its  plan as did the former Bush administration of President Bush or  intervene as did his father, George HW Bush, when he  froze loans guarantees for the Likud-led government, following its refusal to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference.

"It is hard though to predict what could be the Netanyahu's next move, especially since Mitchell's mission is in its early stages."

The Jordan daily Al Rai carried an opinion piece by Mohammad Kharroub who wrote: "As soon as Amnesty International released its report accusing Kurdish security forces known as Asayesh of violating human rights in Kurdistan province, Kurdish security authorities promptly rejected the accusations and asked the international organisation to support its claims with evidence. "The response came from the police director of the city of Arbil in Iraq.  He spoke only about his jurisdiction which would lead us to think anxiously about what is going on in others, especially after the Amnesty's report talked about  arbitrary arrests and acts of torture as  revealed by testimonials of local people. "It is not good for the Kurdistan government to infringe on human rights to the point of nearly becoming considered a despotic government, especially when they are adopting a different Kurdish-Iraqi discourse which boasts two decades of democratic experience. Unfortunately, as it may seem, they have not yet managed  to break with old practices and influence based on a sectarian, family and feudal bases. Now Kurdish people need a more political approach that respects human rights and abides by the rules of the democratic game."

Sateh Noureddine, a regular columnist for Lebanon's As Safir, wrote: "Piracy in the Gulf of Aden is no longer an anecdote or a joke inspired by bygone times when pirate ships flew skull-and-crossbones flags and dominated the seas. Somali pirates, rather, relate their acts to political reasons in Somalia as well as the Arab and Muslim world and their tense relations in the current world order."

New to the discourse of  the  Somali pirates and that of their accomplices on land was to accuse every ship sailing off the Somali coast as "pirating" the wealth of the Somali people and "infringing" on their sovereignty over their territorial waters which day after day are expanding to include a great part of the eastern coast of the African continent. Islamist parties no longer conceal their support for the pirates and encourage them to go further in their pursuit to recover their "repressed rights".

* Digest compiled by Mostapha Elmouloudi [e-mail]