Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 23:49:38 -0600 (MDT)
From: Muhammad Deeb <mdeeb-AT-gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>
Subject: Two Divergent Positions on the Bombing of Yugoslavia 



                  Politics Supersedes Religion in Middle East

                  Defense of Muslims Alters No Alliances

                  By Howard Schneider
                  Washington Post Foreign Service
                  Friday, April 2, 1999; Page A21

                  CAIRO, April 1 - In Saudi Arabia, the leading paper is
                  encouraging NATO to continue bombing Yugoslavia until an
                  independent country can be created for Kosovo's majority
                  Muslim population.

                  In Iran and Iraq, however, the governments have
                  condemned the U.S.-led NATO attacks as a dangerous
                  exercise in Western hegemony.

                  Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are raising aid for
                  ethnic Albanian refugees and Jordan has recalled its
                  ambassador to Belgrade. In Lebanon, crowds have burned
                  the American flag to protest Operation Allied Force.

                  The NATO campaign -- largely in defense of a Muslim
                  population and against a European and Christian
                  government -- has confronted the Arab Muslim world with
                  an unfamiliar opportunity to endorse a U.S.-led military
                  action in the name of Muslim unity.

                  Few have seized the chance. For most countries in the
                  Middle East, the fact that most ethnic Albanians in
                  Kosovo practice Islam seems to be of secondary
                  importance in determining whether to support the
                  bombing, particularly to those countries already
                  inclined against U.S. and Western policies.

                  No Arab nations have explicitly supported the NATO
                  action, even though U.S. allies in the region have begun
                  channeling assistance directly to the ethnic Albanians
                  and issued strong condemnations of Serbian leaders.

                  To those countries generally opposed to the United
                  States, however, the bombing of Yugoslavia is seen as
                  akin to the U.S. and British bombing of Iraq -- the
                  Western forces of globalization, in other words, again
                  deciding how an independent-minded sovereign state
                  should run its internal affairs.

                  The bombing of Yugoslavia is "proof that the U.S. is
                  carrying out a plot against free countries," Iraqi Baath
                  Party leader Abdel-Ghani Abdel-Ghafur was quoted as
                  saying in Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper.

                  Iran tried to balance its stand against the airstrikes
                  by also condemning Yugoslavia's treatment of ethnic
                  Albanian Muslims. But the statement by President
                  Mohammed Khatemi, currently head of the Organization of
                  the Islamic Conference, nevertheless criticized the NATO
                  action and called for a "principled solution."

                  Abdel Moneim Said, director of Egypt's Al Ahram Center
                  for Strategic Studies, said the military action was
                  difficult for many Arabs because it conflicts with so
                  many of the Middle East's stereotypical opinions about
                  the West. Many, particularly on the left, he said, have
                  considered Yugoslavia a model anti-colonialist state,
                  able to forge an independent path the way that Egypt's
                  Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to do in the 1960s.

                  The fact that the Serbian inheritor of that struggle is
                  oppressing a Muslim minority has not necessarily led
                  sympathizers to abandon their support, Said said.

                  Meanwhile, he added, Islamic commentators and analysts
                  have remained largely silent about the issue because it
                  confronts them with an uncomfortable choice between a
                  Yugoslav government notorious for its mistreatment of
                  Muslims and a Western-led military intervention. It may
                  have been easy to criticize NATO and the United States
                  when bombs seemed to fall only on Baghdad, Afghanistan
                  or other spots in the Muslim Middle East; it may be more
                  difficult now.

                  "So far there is a big silence," Said said. "For a long
                  time people said the U.S. would not do it, and there is
                  collusion between the U.S. and Serbia to kill Muslims.
                  Well, now it has happened, and the bombardment is going
                  on and they don't know how to resolve it."

                  Among U.S. allies in the region, Jordan has taken the
                  most direct stand. The new king, Abdullah, recalled the
                  country's ambassador from Belgrade, earning local
                  criticism for what some Jordanian commentators viewed as
                  support for the bombing.

                  In Saudi Arabia, the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat (whose
                  editorials are believed to reflect government thinking)
                  said NATO should continue its military action until an
                  independent state could be created from Kosovo, the
                  largest province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main component.

                  "The Rambouillet agreement must die" and a Kosovo nation
                  be created, the paper said, "before the allied forces'
                  operation ends."

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