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• 10 • Information and liaison bulletin n° 261 • December 2006 broader support to the government but also by acting against those who want to destabilise it by terrorist actions” stated the White House spokesman, Tony Snow. It was in this context that the Conference of National Reconciliation completed its work on 17 December. The 200 delegates present proposed a series of “recommendations”, including the return of former members of the Baath party (formerly the sole party under the Saddam Hussein regime) to the army. This measure, that could be seen as a gesture of opening towards the Sunni community, covers several tens of thousands of ex-officers, and could convince many ex-Baathists, today active in the opposition, to lay down their arms. The various proposals made at the conference “are declarations of good intentions that remain to be put into practice”, admitted, however, Nasser al-Ani, spokesman of the conference. “A single important practical measure was recommended”, which still has to be presented to Parliament by Mr. Maliki, “is the payment of significant pensions to ex-servicemen”, explained Mr. Ani. After the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in April 2003, Paul Bremmer, the former American governor of Iraq, dissolved the Iraqi Army, which at the time was some 400,000 strong, largely composed of Sunni Arabs. Many observers, at the time, had considered this a mistake, which had pushed many former soldiers into the ranks of the insurrection. The Baath Party remains banned, in accordance with Article 7 of the Constitution, “but, in their individual capacities, its members may take part” in the conference, stressed a Shiite member of Parliament, Abbas al-Bayati, a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The conference had begun its work on 16 December, in Baghdad, in a conference centre in the “green zone”, the highly protected sector of the city centre where all the principal Iraqi instituti0ons and the US embassy are located. Its sessions had been broadcast live by the national television service. On 3 December the Iraqi President had rejected the proposal of UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, for holding an international conference on Iraq, considering that the Iraqis themselves should decide the fate of their country. Jalal Talabani was the second Iraqi leader to take this stand, after Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. “We are an independent and sovereign nation, and it is we who must decide the fate of our nation”, Mr. Talabani had declared, according to a communiqué issued by his office. The conference was promised at the beginning of December, but its realisation remained uncertain until the last few days. As its initiator, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, took the stand. “The new Iraqi Army has opened its gates to members of the old Army, to soldiers and officers, and the government of national union is ready to welcome those who wish to serve the nation”, declared Nuri al-Maliki. He make the point that the number of places in it would, no doubt be limited, because of the army’s size, but that those who were not accepted would receive a pension. For many Shiites and Kurds, victims of the Baathist repression, the idea of re-integrating ex-Baathists in the Army and the administration is unacceptable. For many Sunni Arabs, on the other hand, they are political actors who cannot be ignored. The Committee of Moslem Ulemas had announced that it would boycott the conference: “We have too often seen, in the past, the government sign agreements that it later denounces”, explained sheikh Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi, spokesman of this body, the principal Sunni religious organisation. Its leader, Sheikh Hareth al-Dari, at present a refugee abroad, is accused of inciting sectarian violence. His absence was “no surprise” for the Kurdish member of Parliament Mahmud Othman, who considered that the Committee is in “perpetual refusal”. The Sunni Arabs principally criticise Maliki’s government for not attacking the militia that they consider responsible for the violence. Omar Abdul-Sattar Mahmud, of the Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni) calls for them to be purely and simply broken up to “stop the terror”. The radical Shiite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi’s Army is a 60,000- man strong militia, is considered a counter power, suspected of having actively participated in the sectarian violence. The Sadr tendency, which has 6 Ministers and 32 members of Parliament (out of 275), has nevertheless always been present at the negotiating table. The White House hoped that Mr. Bush would be able to make a new strategy public before Christmas. He was obliged to push this back to after the New Year. The Administration invoked the complexity of the task and the multiple implications of a new policy. Iraq’s neighbours are worried at what the new policy might be. On 13 December the New York Times reported that Sunni Saudi Arabia had warned the United States that it might support the Sunni Arabs in the event of a war against the Iraqi Shiites if the American troops withdrew.
n° 261 • December 2006 Information and liaison bulletin • 11 • TONY BLAIR VISITS ANKARA AND BAGHDAD O n 17 December, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, visited Baghdad to affirm his support for his Iraqi opposite number, Nuri al-Maliki. Arriving in the greatest secrecy in the course of the morning he went to the “green zone”, the highly protected sector of the City centre, where he met Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani. Mr. Blair declared that Great Britain “will support the Iraqi government and people to ensure that your democracy be not destroyed by the terrorism, by the sectarianism (…) of those who want to live in hate rather than in peace”. “Innocent blood is being shed today, but it is not shed by the democratically elected government, or those who support it”, Mr. Blair considered. Nearly 7,100 British soldiers are at present deployed in Iraq, principally in the Basra region (550 Km South of Baghdad). Mr Blair’s journey comes at a time when he is under increasing pressure from his countries public opinion to withdraw the British contingent from Iraq. The British Prime Minister had earlier visited Turkey and Egypt as part of a regional tour. During his short stay in Ankara, Tony Blair met Mr. Erdogan in the evening of 15 December to inform him of his support for Turkey’s membership of the European Union and to discuss the Cyprus question and events in the Near East. He took parting a joint press conference with his Turkish opposite number, Recep Tayyip Erdogan before leaving for Cairo on 16 December. Furthermore, on 12 December, before his trip to the Middle East, Tony Blair had declared at a press conference that Iran represented a “major threat” to the stability of the Middle East and that there was no chance of associating Teheran in efforts to check violence in Iraq. “I do not believe that we have the slightest reason to hide the fact that Iran is a major strategic threat to the cohesion of the whole region”, Mr. Blair had indicated. “At this time Iran is creating the maximum of problems for moderate governments and to ourselves in the region — in Palestine, in the Lebanon, and in Iraq”, he continued. “I observe then region as a whole at the moment and everything Iran is doing is negative”, had added Mr. Blair. He had, nevertheless sent an envoy to Damascus to propose to the Syrians the “strategic” possibility of cooperating with the international community and ceasing to support terrorism, on pain of remaining isolated… A DIPLOMATIC BALLET IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AGAINST A BACKGROUND OF POLITICALLY REHABILITATING DAMASCUS AND TEHERAN D iplomatic visits have accelerated in the Middle East in general, and in Syria and Iran in particular throughout December. First the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited Iran on 2 December to meet the Iranian Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmud Ahmedinjad to examine the latest developments in Iraq, Syria and the Lebanon as well as bilateral relations. Then he went on to Syria on 6 December for discussions with President Bachar al-Assad and Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otri on bilateral relations and to strengthen their close cooperation. He revealed that a free trade agreement would come into effect on 1 January 2007, noting that Syria is an important country regionally, with which Turkey has good neighbourly relations. Damascus was also the last stage of a four-day tour of the Near East by the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. On 4 December he visited Syria to meet his Syrian opposite number, Walid Muallem, and Bachar al-Assad. Last August he had cancelled, at the last minute, a visit to the Syrian capital following an anti-Israeli speech by President al-Assad. Moreover, following the report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) that recommends contacts with Damascus and Teheran, the US Democratic Senator for Massachusetts, John Kerry, George Bush’s the defeated rival at the last presidential elections judged that Washington’s refusal to dialogue with Syria and Iran was a “mistake” and also visited Damascus to meet Bachar al-Assad in mid-December. For his part, Bachar al-Assad made a working visit to Moscow on 18 December, during which he had discussions with his Russian opposite number, Vladimir Putin. According tom Evgeni Posukhov, the Russian diplomat in Damascus, Mr. Assad, for whom this is the second visit to Moscow since 2005, examined the “difficult situation” in the Near East and the “means of settling the crises” in the region with his Russian opposite number. “This new Russia wants to keep a special role of negotiator with Bachar al- Assad”, notably wrote Fedor Lukianov, editor in chief of the
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