Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Western officials secretly met with Arab opposition

Why not talk to Arab leaders instead of the Arab opposition? There is something very wrong with this picture. This is not good.

Turning the Arabs against the Persians or using the Arabs to take out Iran is a strategy long used by Bush. A case in point is the Persian Gulf Island dispute.
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-Am

Western officials secretly met with Arab opposition
4/29/2005 2:00:00 PM GMT

Secret meetings between Arab opposition groups and U.S. and EU officials were held in Morocco

U.S. and European officials held secret meetings with opposition groups from eastern Arab countries in Morocco, official sources said.

The meetings started on April 17 and ended on April 21, the sources said, adding that the media was banned from covering the talks.

The sources, who demanded anonymity, refused to identify the U.S. or the European officials who participated in the talks, but said that they are influential figures, including researchers, politicians and reporters.

"This Arab-American-European dialogue was attended by men of integrity from the two sides with the objective of building bridges and pushing forward dialogue among civilizations, besides making efforts to ease the tense atmosphere between the East and the West," one source said.

The official added that the talks were also aimed at trying to understand the decision-making process of the two parties.

"This does not mean that either side accepts the decision," he said.

The sources said that both sides discussed a number of regional and international issues, including the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the situation in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

They also discussed issues related to culture and human rights, according to the sources.

Last week, reports said that the Bush administration is trying to reach out to the Syrian opposition over the growing fears that the political unrest in Lebanon could spill over and suddenly destabilize Syria, which borders four countries pivotal to U.S. Middle East policy -- Israel, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, U.S. and Syrian sources said.

In a recent interview Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the U.S. is talking to "as many people as we possibly can" about the situation in Syria, as well as in Lebanon, to ensure that Washington is prepared in the event of yet another abrupt political upheaval.

"What we're trying to do is to assess the situation so that nobody is blindsided, because events are moving so fast and in such unpredictable directions that it is only prudent at this point to know what's going on," Rice said.

Rice also cited "the possibility for what I often call discontinuous events, meaning that you were expecting them to go along like this and all of a sudden they go off in this direction, in periods of change like this.

“So we're going to look at all the possibilities and talk to as many people as we possibly can,” she said.


http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_ID=8132

Reference:

Bush is not above arming certain factions including terrorists for his own sinister purposes.

To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord.
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