SAUDI ARABIA - The Danger Of Depending On US Protection.

The Saudi leadership has already been split on the issue of Riyadh depending on American protection, with Interior Minister Prince Nayef now being among those calling for a distance between the kingdom and the US. The latter believe the US has fallen into a dangerous trap in Iraq which will have equally dangerous effects on Arab regimes associated with the Americans.

In a measure of a growing alarm in Washington, key members of the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee on April 4 said the Bush administration should consider extending the June 30 deadline for a handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis or risk seeing Iraq fall into even deeper trouble.

"We're going to end up with a civil war in Iraq if, in fact, we decide we can turn this over - including the bulk of the security - to the Iraqis", Democrat Senator Joseph Biden warned. An Iraqi force, he said, would not be ready to assume security duties for at least another three years. "Something's got to happen between now and then ... or else we're going to end up with a civil war there. We're going to end up with the worst of all worlds".

Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the committee's chairman, was equally stern, criticising the White House for its lack of a plan for what happens after CPA chief Paul Bremer leaves Iraq on July 1. "At this point, I would have thought there would have been a more comprehensive plan", he said. "The fact is that we don't know what we're going to do".

The US confrontation with Muqtada Al Sadr is complicating the situation in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world. Bush's election strategists seem to believe the June 30 deadline is important for him to win a second term. But until now no one even knows what colour the new Iraqi governing body will assume or how to keep those who are chosen to serve from looking like mere American puppets.

The UN, whose help and involvement the Bush team now desperately needs, is not committed to taking part in the process. Nor does the UN seem to have been told what kind of decision-making structure it is being invited to join.

The US-approved "representatives" of the majority Shiites in Baghdad and the south, the minority Sunnis in the central triangle including the capital, and the estranged Kurds of the north have shown scant interest in co-operating with each other. With the exception of a few members of the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council (IGC), only the Kurds have clearly embraced the concept of federalism, in power sharing, called for in the interim constitution.

The Shiites expect to take control. The few Shiite leaders whom the US still considers to be friends are yet to prove they will protect the rights of the Sunnis, Kurds and other minorities after June 30. With the more radical Shiite theologians in full revolt, even the so-called "moderates" like Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani have failed to condemn the violence of Sadr's Jaysh Al Mahdi (see Recorder of this week's Diplomat).

If Bush keeps sticking to the June 30 deadline, the US and its occupation partners could be in real danger of handing Iraqi sovereignty to a body divided internally, is regarded as illegitimate by the people and has no means other than foreign armies to enforce its authority. These armies will still be facing hostile fire and still not be adequately backed up internationally.

Allowing the June 30 deadline to slip could anger the Shiites further. Rather than letting the Iraqis "decide the course of democracy by the use of force", as Bush has claimed, the Shiites could escalate their violence in such a way as to rally many other Iraqis around them. That could lead to a partitioning of Iraq, which would begin with the Kurds fighting for their independence.

Diehard Sunnis, perhaps including the Wahhabis, might then invite the Turks to intervene. If the Shiites invite the Iranians to intervene, the situation will become more complicated.

This is not even a scenario, because the chances of Turkey and Iran intervening openly in such a messy situation thus far appear to be close to nil. But such a situation will certainly be tempting enough for Iraq's neighbours to take the risk of adding more mess for US-led forces to clear.

The problem now is that, with the exception of Kuwait, none of Iraq's neighbours is ready to accept the fall-out from, or to afford the price of, success for the Americans in Iraq.

With the exception of Kuwait and a moderate Islamist government in Turkey, none of them is really interested in Bush's "Greater Middle East Initiative" to democratise the Arab world (see News Service of this week's Diplomat).