Istanbul Talks On The Iraq Factor.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al-Shara' was on April 30 trying to steer a regional conference of Iraq and its neighbours - Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, plus Egypt and Bahrain - towards a common stand concerning a government in Baghdad just formed by a Shiite Arab Prime Minister, Dr. Ibrahim Al-Ja'fari. Held in Istanbul by the foreign ministers of these nine states, the conference on April 30 was to issue issue an appeal for a full Sunni Arab participation in the next stages of the political process in the conflict-torn Iraq.

A preparatory meeting for this was held in Istanbul on the previous day by diplomats from Iraq and the eight other states. They met behind closed doors and prepared the agenda for the April 30 conference. Dr. Ja'fari had originally said he wanted to attend the April 30 gathering. But he informed the Turkish hosts that he would not be able to travel to Istanbul because of ongoing efforts to complete his government lineup.

After more than three months of political wrangling since the first free elections in the history of the Iraqi republic were held on Jan. 30, Ja'fari on April 28 announced only a partial lineup which was approved by the National Assembly but frustrated the Sunni Arab community.

At the meeting in Istanbul, the ministers discussed developments in Iraq since the Jan. 30 elections, including a Sunni/Baathist/Salafi insurgency depending on Syria for a major part of its logistics, and the next stages of the political process in the country. These will feature the drafting of a permanent constitution and preparations for elections in December.

A senior Turkish diplomat on April 29 told the press: "Our main message will be that this process should move ahead smoothly and that the participation of those who did not take part in the previous elections, the Sunni Arabs, should be ensured". The ministers were also expected to discuss security matters such as the need to ensure that no militants infiltrate Iraq from neighbouring countries to join the insurgence there, he said.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd retained in this post from the interim government of Dr. Iyad Allawi, attended the meeting, which the Turkish hosts postponed twice earlier this month in anticipation of the new government in Baghdad. On April 29 Zebari told AFP in Baghdad: "We believe Iraq's neighbours have an important and crucial role to help...in the stabilisation of Iraq and of the region".

In addition to regional co-operation, Zebari said he wanted to deal with the issue of "the infiltration of foreign fighters and terrorists and the transfer of funds and weapons" from neighbouring countries into Iraq.

Officials and newspapers around the Middle East on April 29 cautiously welcomed the new Iraqi cabinet, commenting on what one called its "painful birth" and pointing to the enormous challenges ahead. There was almost universal agreement that Iraqis must work even harder to overcome ethnic and religious differences and to put an end to the insecurity which was plaguing their country.

What If Iraq Breaks Apart: The one thing in Iraq which worries Assad's Baathist regime most is the prospect of a Shiite-Sunni war there. That could easily lead to Iraq's dismemberment and resultant dangers of civil war in Syria would then become very serious.

On April 6, Iraq's National Assembly chose Jalal Talabani, a lifelong Kurdish rebel, as Iraq's first ever democratically elected head of state. Talabani's personality could not be more different from Saddam Hussein, whose seat he now holds. Apart from being the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party which controls the eastern half of an autonomous northern Iraqi region called Kurdistan, Talabani is a human rights activist who has gone on record in saying he was personally opposed to Saddam's execution because he was against capital punishment.

While Saddam was insular, paranoid and ignorant, Talabani is gregarious, widely travelled and has an appetite for knowledge as large as his legendary love of food. As a humanist, Talabani is the starkest contrast to a predecessor whose regime murdered well over 500,000 of its own citizens.

US President George W. Bush and his American supporters have trumpeted a democratic process which has replaced Saddam with a leader of the very people Saddam once gassed. But democracy can also be inconvenient, especially for a US administration which has made the spread of freedom its top foreign policy goal for the Middle East, but which also is deeply committed to preserving the region's existing states.

Talabani's elevation to president of the Iraqi republic - in return, Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) head Masoud Barzani will be president of Kurdistan - has been the product of a deal between the two main winners of Iraq's Jan. 30 polls. The winners - a long Shiite religious list called United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) which was supported by two thirds of Iraq's Shiites and a Kurdish nationalist slate which won nearly all the votes in the Kurdish north - were able to agree that a Kurd would hold the largely symbolic presidency while a Shiite would be the more powerful prime minister. They agreed on a division of cabinet portfolios, but on almost nothing else.