IRAQ - Blair's View.

British PM Tony Blair says a phased withdrawal of UK troops from Iraq could begin within six months. During a lightning visit to Basra last week, his fourth in the past 12 months, he held out the prospect of a pullout beginning in the first half of 2006. He refused to divulge a specific timetable, but he sounded an optimistic note and gave the clearest signal yet of British military intentions. Britain, which has 8,000 troops in Iraq, and the US, with 158,000, are both keen to cut back their military presence over the coming year.

A withdrawal is welcome but no sooner is the "W" word mentioned than along comes the condition: provided the situation stabilises or provided the Iraqi forces can cope. On the surface this is a sensible approach. But Who will make the decision? What exactly is the standard of peace required? Less than five deaths daily? And are the people in Washington and London, who thought there were WMD in Iraq that could be launched within 45 minutes, have any credibility when it comes to deciding on matters relating to Iraq?

The Poles Will Keep Their Troops: Poland's new government on Dec. 27 sent a request to President Lech Kaczynski to keep Polish troops in Iraq through 2006 to help train the Iraqi military. The previous government had pledged to remove the 1,450 Polish troops by end-2005. But Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the prime minister, said he decided to prolong their stay after receiving requests from Iraqi officials and allies of Warsaw. The soldiers will focus more on training Iraqis and less on combating insurgents.

The decision was opposed by the leading opposition party, Civic Platform, which said Poland had completed its mission and should withdraw. That was echoed by the minority government's informal supporter, the populist League of Polish Families, whose leader Roman Giertych last week called the decision to stay in Iraq "a great strategic error" -the mission in Iraq is not popular, with opinion polls showing 70% of Poles disagree with the operation.

The death of 17 Polish troops in Iraq, as well as of two Polish journalists, has soured public opinion. "This is a very difficult decision", Marcinkiewicz said, admitting the public opposition to the mission.

Warsaw's original decision to assist in the invasion in Iraq was seen as strengthening Poland's alliance with the US, which the government at the time hoped would produce economic benefits and would persuade Washington to allow Poles to travel to the US without visas. There were also hopes of lucrative contracts to rebuild and rearm Iraq.

Although Poland's ranking as an ally of the US has risen steeply thanks to the Iraq mission, Warsaw has seen few tangible benefits, and has paid a price in worsening relations with France and Germany, both of whom strongly opposed the war. Although the former ex-communist government was pro-American, the new conservative government is even more so, particularly Radoslaw Sikorski, the defence minister, who worked in Washington at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the neo-conservative think-tank, and who has close ties with the Republican administration.

There are renewed hopes that the US will repay Polish participation in Iraq with an easing of visa requirements and more military assistance. During a pre-Christmas visit to Iraq, Marcinkiewicz's delegation held out hopes of Polish companies gaining lucrative oil exploration contracts in Iraq. In January an Iraqi delegation including the ministers of defence, finance, and oil are due to visit Warsaw.

Yushchenko Visits For Oil: President Viktor Yushchenko, on a surprise one-day visit to Iraq on Dec. 26, said Ukraine sought boosting co-operation with this country in oil and gas extraction, transportation and power machinery sectors. Yushchenko, while inspecting Ukrainian troops that are pulling out from Iraq after completing a two-year peace keeping mission, said his meetings with senior Iraqi government officials will boost co-operation.

Yushchenko's Orange Revolution, impressive a year ago but now with a high price, could cost Ukraine a serious energy crisis in 2006. Russia recently raised the price of gas being invoiced to Ukraine from about $50 per 1,000 cubic metres to more than $230. Ukraine rejected this price. Russia threatened to stop pumping the gas to Ukraine if there was no agreement by Jan. 1, while Kiev said it had enough gas for the winter. But most of the gas passing through Ukraine was destined for the European Union (see this week's APS Review in omt1EgyptProsJan2-06).

Successful Iraqi elections, followed by a smooth drawdown of US forces, would help Bush's Republican Party to justify casualties in Iraq, which have so far mounted to more than 2,150 US troops dead and 15,000 wounded since the invasion nearly three years ago. US officials insist that any troop withdrawal must be "conditions-based" - with Iraqi military and police forces taking more responsibility for security in the country - rather than set to a timetable. Yet the success of the Dec. 15 poll remains in doubt, with Sunni Arab and secular parties saying they were cheated and threatening to boycott the resulting parliament. According to preliminary results, Sunni Arab parties may have captured about 20% of seats.

Pan-Arabism Vs Pluralism: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, speaking to the first-ever gathering of the Arab Parliament on Dec. 27, told its members solidarity would enable the Arab world to successfully confront the challenges it faces. The 88 members, four from the parliaments or advisory boards of each Arab League state, met at the league's Cairo HQ for a session also addressed by the League's Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

The interim parliament has no binding legislative authority and can give its opinion only on matters referred to it by the Arab League council, which represents Arab governments. To be based in Damascus, now the capital of Ba'thist pan-Arabism and dictatorship, it will meet twice a year. But privately League officials admitted already last week that it could be many years before the new institution gained enough clout to influence events in a region which has been remarkably passive in the last 16 years. The league's Cairo-based secretariat and Moussa have been attacked frequently by member-states for their uselessness in the face of US and Israeli actions in the Arab world.

Mubarak called the inaugural session "a historic occasion which opens new horizons for joint Arab action". He said: "Our great Arab world, through the unity of its sons, has the means to restore its vitality, to face current challenges and to assume its rightful place in the world". Mubarak - notorious among rulers who hide behind their fingers, while pluralism is gaining ground in the region (see news1-ArabDemocracyJan2-06) - told the pan-Arab lawmakers democracy and human rights were not "a product of any one culture and were not values that could be mass produced for export". But, he said, "they are human values and principles shared by all the nations and cultures". He defended the Arab League, saying it had proved its capability to "develop and cope with our changing era and the aspirations of our peoples..." Moussa said creation of the pan-Arab parliament was proof that "development of democracy in the Arab world was underway".

Rawhi Fattouh, speaker of the Palestinian legislature, said this parliament would be valuable only if it kept an eye on the actions of Arab governments, later telling reporters: "It must be a monitor of Arab executive institutions, but if it is just a union of parliaments then it's not going to be important".

Some Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, do not have elected parliaments, so their representatives in the Arab Parliament are drawn from appointed advisory boards which have no power. Some of the elected Arab parliaments are dominated by the executive or ruling party, like those in Cairo and Damascus, and rarely challenge the government.

The concept of the Arab parliament was part of a package of changes promoted by Moussa as a way to make the League stronger and more effective. But Arab heads of state have not approved other aspects of the package, including an Arab court of justice and an Arab security council to handle regional disputes. The new interim parliament has five years to draft the arrangements for a permanent Arab parliament.

In one of its first decisions on Dec. 27, however, it chose a liberal Kuwaiti MP, Muhammad Jassem al-Saqr as its speaker. Saqr, who has been head of the Kuwaiti parliament's Foreign Relations Committee, has an initial term of one year. He comes from one of the 12 original Sunni clans of the Najd's Bani Utub tribe who settled in Kuwait and in the 1920s forced the ruling al-Sabah family - also from the Bani Utub - to establish a parliamentary democracy in which these groups were represented through elections. The Khalifas, another Utubi/Sunni clan whose members moved to rule Baghdad under British protection, are now presiding over some degree of democracy. The Jalahimas, a clan of the same roots, can be found among liberal democrats and business clans in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE.

It would be logical to assume that, since the interim Arab parliament has a Sagr for its initial speaker, this body should eventually become a trend-setter in Arab pluralism. But the fact that Syria has managed to have this parliament's base in Damascus can also point to the possibility of it becoming a mere rubber stamp for pan-Arabist dictators.

Publicly, Arab League officials say they hope the permanent parliament will eventually have teeth, possibly through direct elections similar to those held for the European parliament. This was how one official summed it up: "It's only a start, but the European parliament started small too. It's part of a trend away from an Arab League which exclusively represents governments". Under Moussa in recent years, the league has brought some civil society groups into discussions. One league official told reporters: "We have several regional parliaments - the European Parliament and the African Parliament. The Arab Parliament will be looking at them and their experiences and what they can learn from them". It will be pan-Arabism versus pluralism in the Arab world.

In Iraq, pan-Arabism is an old Sunni-dominated trend whose advocates hope will once again become the country's ruling ideology. Iraq's Shi'ite Arab majority and the Kurds, however, will make sure this will never happen again in Iraq.

The background of Iraqi politics was and still is a history of struggle between advocates of Arab nationalism and those of Iraqi nationalism - though both have been led by Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The former believe in the close connection between Iraq and the rest of "The Arab Nation", while the latter believe in concentrating on Iraq and leaving any attachment to other Arabs in a secondary place. This is a struggle which goes back to the time of the founding of the state. Following the British occupation of Iraq in 1914-17, those supporting Iraqi nationalism held the upper hand - they were mostly of the Sunni Arab minority, or Iraq's Sunni Arab Triangle.

All attempts to change the course of Iraqi politics under the Hashemite monarchy between 1921-58 were foiled by the Sunni Arab regime, which was backed by the British. The most serious attempt came in 1941 and led to Iraqi-British military confrontations and the re-occupation of Iraq by the British Army. The success of the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 and the subsequent emergence of Gamal Abdel-Nasser as its leader gave a great boost to pan-Arab nationalist feelings all over the Arab world. Iraq was no exception.

To confront the growing tendency towards pan-Arab unity, which culminated in the Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958, the Iraqi monarchy created the Hashemite Union with Jordan. There were attempts by the regime, headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa'id, to include Syria and Kuwait in this union. Before such attempts could succeed, however, the Iraqi monarchy was toppled. Although Arab nationalist officers played a leading role in the change, in fact the Iraqi monarchy's opposition to Egypt during the 1956 Suez war ultimately undermined any popular support it might have had, Arab unionists were soon removed and replaced by Iraqi Communists who were against joining the UAR. They lasted until 1963, when the Ba'th Party took over power. Although Arab nationalists dominated Iraqi politics from that second coup d'etat until 2003 and the American occupation, nothing serious was done by any of the subsequent Iraqi regimes to conclude real unity between Iraq and any of the Arab countries. The most prominent attempts were in 1963 between Iraq, Egypt and Syria; in 1964 with Egypt; in early 1979 with Syria; and in late 1989 with Egypt, Jordan and Yemen - with the Arab Co-operation Council (ACC) project led by Saddam Hussein. All these attempts were quickly doomed.

The removal of Saddam's Ba'thist dictatorship in Iraq by the US forces and the occupation which ensued ushered in the end of Arab nationalist feeling and supporters in Iraq. All those who came with the US forces and were allowed to govern Iraq were anti-Arab nationalists and promoted instead new Iraqi national tendencies. In fact, Iraq is witnessing a very serious effort to separate it from its Arab environment.

All previous political blunders have been blamed on the Arab world and Arabs in general. The ability of the Ba'thist regime to remain in power 35 years has been blamed on the support of Arab states. Iraq's debt to Arab Gulf (GCC) states, which constitutes the largest part of the national debt, was illegally enlarged to further weaken Iraq. Most of the debts were the result of an agreement to export oil on behalf of Iraq, to be settled at the end of the Iraq-Iran war.

After Saddam's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, however, these debts were treated as debts with interest. Nevertheless, despite the strong boost and prominence the US occupation has given to Iraqi nationalists, if the US project in Iraq fails, there could be a possibility of the pan-Arab nationalists taking over in Baghdad. But in that case the change would be short-lived and civil war would become a stronger possibility.

Iraq's pan-Arab nationalist will no doubt try to exploit the American failure, but this will not be successful mainly because of two basic elements of the Iraqi society: the sectarian element likely to be exploited to the full by Iran and Iraq's Shi'ite majority; and the ethnic element represented by Iraq's Kurds and other non-Arab minorities in the country.

The recent US resort to the Arab League to help the main Iraqi factions find a way out of the impasse may suggest that the pan-Arab nationalist trend is on the rise. But this is highly unlikely as this trend has failed to cope with the political, social and economic changes across the globe.

Pluralism has already shown to be a stronger trend in Iraq, with a small but fast-growing segment of Iraqi society having even gone as far as calling for relations between Baghdad and Israel.