CAIRO AND DOHA, QATAR — Qatar, a glittering peninsula of skyscrapers and sand, reminds one of a well-dressed, ambitious little guy playing all the angles in a rough neighborhood. Its pushy rise to prominence is creating suspicion and hardening the Middle East split between moderate U.S. allies and more militant nations.
The Persian Gulf emirate is holding summits and orchestrating regional diplomacy, sometimes outflanking the traditional powers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and in calming Lebanese factions.
The oil-rich nation of 825,000 people, most of them foreign workers, juts into the sea like a swollen thumb. White mosques and spiraling, fluted buildings stand beside legions of cranes in the capital, Doha, where sails of dhows snap along a palm-lined corniche past branch campuses of American universities.
It is this international style mixed with a new architectural panache that Qatar wants to imprint upon its brand of media savvy foreign policy.
Qatar's prestige emanates largely from the Al Jazeera channel based in Doha. The state-owned station broadcasts the most comprehensive coverage in the region but also plays to populist anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. views, giving Qatar legitimacy among Arabs even as it hosts one of the largest U.S. bases in the region.
These dual images are part of a careful sleight-of-hand by the country's emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani.
"Qatar feels it has a duty to fulfill in the Arab world, especially after the retreat of the role played by certain Arab countries," said Muhammad Musfir, of Qatar University, referring to Egypt's failure to resolve regional problems.
To its critics, Doha, with one of the world's highest per capita incomes, speaks in too many tongues. It has close ties to Iran, Syria and the radical group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But except for a break in relations during the Gaza war in January, Qatar was the only Gulf country with economic and diplomatic links to Israel.
Qatar could be a help or a hindrance to the U.S. as it seeks to improve relations with Iran and prepare for political shifts when aging allies President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia are no longer in power.
U.S. misgivings over Qatar were summed up by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) after a recent trip to the region: "Qatar can't continue to be an American ally on Monday that sends money to Hamas on Tuesday."
