A kiss on the cheek: a slap on the face of Uncle Sam

NEW YORK — The symbolism was very much in evidence in a splashy front page picture in the New York Times accompanying a story on the Arab League Summit in Beirut last Friday.

Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, publicly embraced Izzat Ibrahim, a senior member of the ruling Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, who led his country's delegation to the just-concluded summit.

As Abdullah planted a kiss on Ibrahim's cheek, he also delivered a slap on the face of Uncle Sam.

The significance was not lost on the New York Times which said that this "very public embrace" appeared to be a rebuff to the Bush administration and another sign of its limited influence in a region it chose largely to ignore during its first months in office.

The gesture by the Saudis may have been a page one story — but where does symbolism end and reality begin?

The Arabs have a notoriety for disunity and for undermining the Palestinian cause for national or even American interests.

And they have rarely succeeded in cleaning up their acts — either in public or in private.

But for the first time, Arab leaders seemingly stood united declaring that any military attack on Iraq would be construed as an attack on all Arab states.

During the 1991 Gulf War, virtually all of the Arab states cooperated with the United States and its allies when American forces succeeded in ousting Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

But this time around, the Saudis appear to have warned the United States that in the event of a fresh military attack on Iraq, American war planes will not be permitted to use Saudi Arabia as a jumping-off point.

At the Arab summit, there was also a pledge by the Iraqis to cooperate with the United Nations on the resumption of arms inspections.

Iraq also agreed to recognise Kuwait as an independent sovereign nation and never to invade that country again.

The United States, however, remained sceptical.

"If true, that would be good," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher responded. "But Iraq has never evidenced real intent to respect Kuwait sovereignty."

The turning point in the Arab summit was apparently the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The Arabs are furious that the United States has virtually given a free hand to a heavily-armed Israel to continue massacring the Palestinians.

George Hawatmeh, editor of the Jordanian daily Al Rai, says the Arab summit has sent a clear signal to the United States that Palestine has a higher priority than Iraq.

Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East seeking Arab support for a fresh military attack on Iraq, as part of the continued American war on terrorism.

But he received little or no firm commitments for military support for an invasion of Iraq.

The message at the Arab summit, Hawatmeh says, was clear: "Take care of the Palestinian problem, the mother of all problems, and we will solve the rest in our own way."

The political, economic and military relationship between the United States and the Arab world is more intricate than what appears on the surface.

Just as much as the United States is dependent on cheap oil from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the Gulf nations have a strong military relationship because of their overdependence on American weapons.

Egypt and Jordan, on the other hand, cannot hope to survive if Washington decides to cut off all economic and military grants to the two countries.

Currently, Egypt receives a staggering $1.3 billion (that's a billion with a "b") in outright US military grants every year while Jordan receives about $75 million annually.

The monies, of course, are channelled back to the United States because the stipulation is that US military grants can be utilised only for the purchase of American weapons systems.

Not surprisingly, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan skipped the Beirut summit last week for different publicly-declared reasons.