CAIRO — After months of expressing their individual opposition to a U.S. attack on Iraq, Arab leaders offered a united front Thursday, declaring their "total rejection of the threat of aggression on Arab nations, especially Iraq."
The statement was issued at the end of a two-day meeting of the Arab League, the 22-member interest group that has often found it extraordinarily difficult to join forces behind a single agenda.
But propelled by anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab leaders have forcefully notified the White House of the region's profound opposition to an attack. The only nod to U.S. demands was a renewed call on Iraq to allow the return of United Nations weapons inspectors to the country.
"If this war takes place, we see it against a backdrop of terror and anger in the Middle East," said Amr Moussa, the league's secretary-general. "People are angry and frustrated and cannot accept what is happening in the occupied territories.
"We will continue to work to avoid a military confrontation or a military action," he said, "because we believe that it will open the gates of hell in the Middle East."
Although U.S. allies such as Kuwait and Jordan have said they wouldn't object to a regime change in Baghdad, the social climate in the Arab world is so agitated, no leader is willing to express anything but total outrage at American intentions toward Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
That has created an environment in which Washington says Hussein must be eliminated because he is a threat to his neighbors, even as all of those neighbors have joined together, at least publicly, to declare their opposition.
"If the United States invades Iraq, it will cause deep anti-American feeling and will provoke revenge and violence in Arab and Islamic countries," Youssef ibn Alawi, Oman's minister of state for foreign affairs, said this week at a meeting of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
"The world cannot accept a weakened role for the United Nations," said Alawi, whose country plays host to a U.S. air base and arms depot. "Those who are thinking they can impose a new law for their own benefit, they are pushing the world into instability and chaos."
It is difficult to determine whether this tough talk means that the United States will be barred from using key military installations throughout the region.
