Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Country is hurtling towards disintegration, Saudis warn (The Guardian)

Exit Strategy?
Am.
Country is hurtling towards disintegration, Saudis warn
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Saturday September 24, 2005
The Guardian
The Saudi government yesterday warned that Iraq is hurtling towards 
disintegration and that an election planned for December is unlikely to 
make any difference. The government said it was delivering this bleak 
assessment to both the US and British administrations as a matter of 
urgency.
Saudi fears of a break-up were voiced by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the 
foreign minister, in an interview with Associated Press published 
yesterday, and at a meeting on Thursday night with the US media, 
including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He said: "The 
impression is gradually going toward disintegration. There seems to be 
no dynamic now that is pulling the country together. All the dynamics 
there are pushing the people away from each other."
His comments are the most pessimistic about Iraq to be made in public 
by a Middle East leader in recent months.
Prince Saud, who is meeting Bush administration officials in 
Washington, said his government warned the US before the war of the 
consequences of the invasion but was ignored. "It is frustrating to see 
something that is clearly going to happen, and you are not listened to 
by a friend, and soon harm comes out of it. It hurts."
Saudi Arabia sits on a council with other Iraqi neighbours - Iran, 
Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey - and Prince Saud said the main worry 
is that the break-up of Iraq "will draw the countries of the region 
into conflict". Turkey is worried about an independent Kurdish state in 
the north of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which is primarily made up of Sunni 
Muslims, is concerned about the growing influence of Iran in southern 
Iraq through its co-religionists, the Shias. The Saudi fear is not only 
that Iran would be greatly strengthened but that it would be tempted to 
extend its influence further by creating unrest among the small 
communities of Shia in the north of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
He expressed scepticism about US predictions that security in Iraq will 
improve after the election. A referendum on Iraq's new constitution is 
planned for October 15 and a general election in December. The US and 
Britain hope that the election will be a watershed. "Perhaps what they 
are saying is going to happen," Prince Saud said. "I wish it would 
happen, but I don't think that a constitution by itself will resolve 
the issues."
The US response to his warnings was to predict an improvement after the 
referendum and the election. Prince Saud said: "But what I am trying to 
do is say that unless something is done to bring Iraqis together, 
elections alone won't do it."
The US has been pressing Saudi Arabia, along with other Arab states, to 
help Iraq by sending diplomatic representation to the country. But 
Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to comply following the kidnapping and 
murder this summer of Ihab al-Sharif, the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq, 
and Ali Belaroussi, the head of the Algerian mission, and his colleague 
Izzedine Belkadi, a diplomatic attache.
Prince Saud said a Saudi ambassador in Baghdad would become an 
immediate target for assassination. "I doubt that he'd last a day."
The prince blamed the unrest partly on a series of US decisions since 
the invasion. He claimed the US was guilty of alienating the Sunni 
population by designating "every Sunni as a Ba'athist criminal".

 Am.
letto e [  cut  ]
#_Verissimo; ad ogni conferenza giornalistica, prima e dopo il conflitto, il
rappresentante saudita, ha sempre ammonito circa il pericolo della
destabilizzazione del MO.
_Nel caos generale io ripropongo la candidatura, a presidente del governo(!)
iracheno, di Saddam Hussein e che Chalabi coi quaranta ladroni rifacciano le
valige per gli Stati Uniti al seguito di tutti i crociati, altrimenti ci
rimettono la ghirba. :-/
Giano

All the dynamics there are pushing the people away from each other."
Puttanata.
-Stefano