Iraq: A summit of leaders of the oil-rich Gulf states ended in the Bahraini capital, Manama, yesterday with a call to Iraqis to participate fully in next month's landmark elections.
The Bahraini Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Abdul Ghaffar, told reporters that while differences remained among members of the Gulf Cooperation Council about the timing of the elections, most member-states wanted them to go ahead on January 30th, as scheduled.
"Some countries say it would be better to postpone the elections. But most agree with the timetable, as a first step towards stability on Iraq," he said. "The present vacuum in Iraqi politics must be filled. The basic constitution of Iraq protects the rights of all political and ethnic groups, so that no one group can dominate."
A spokesman for the GCC, whose members include Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and who control 40 per cent of the world's oil reserves, said the elections were "essential" to the future stability of Iraq.
The Gulf states are concerned that the elections be carried out "in a proper manner, with full participation by all segments of Iraqi society, and with no outside interference", the GCC's general-secretary, Abdul Rahman Al-Attiya, told a press conference.
According to officials, the summit also discussed the threat posed by Islamic militants and the recent internet broadcast by Osama bin Laden, calling on his supporters to attack oil installations in the Gulf. "There are existing security arrangements between the GCC countries. The question is how we can engage Iran and Iraq with the GCC," a spokesman said.
The most recent attack by Islamic militants in the Gulf region was on December 6th, when gunmen killed five non-American staff at the US Consulate in the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah. Last Friday and Sunday further broadcasts on the same Islamic website repeated the call for attacks on oil sites in the Arabian Peninsula.
The GCC summit, which is held annually on a rotating basis in each of the six member-states, suffered a setback on Monday when the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah, withdrew as leader of his country's delegation in a dispute over bilateral trade agreements between the smaller member states and the US.
These agreements, in particular a free trade agreement signed in September by Bahrain and the US, were "in clear violation" of existing GCC agreements, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisel, told a press conference.
He added that the Bahrain-US agreement and similar agreements currently under negotiation between the US and Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates would weaken Gulf solidarity at a critical time for the region. A spokesman for the Bahraini Information Ministry said efforts would continue to convince Saudi Arabia that "these accords, far from being detrimental, serve the interests of the Gulf states".
An official said the dispute was a symptom of broader concerns in Saudi Arabia, formerly the principal ally of the US in the region and the dominant member of the GCC, that its influence was continuing to wane in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
The summit also called on US President Bush to give "absolute priority" to the conflict in the Middle East, "so as to honour the commitments and promises that have been made to establish a viable Palestinian state". It requested that Israeli nuclear installations be subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The principal domestic issue in debate at the GCC summit was a controversial study by the Bahraini government, recommending that migrant workers be repatriated after five years. There are 12 million migrant workers in the Gulf states, as against an Arab population of 30 million, and the number of migrants is growing by 600,000 per annum. Migrant workers, many of them from India and the Philippines and working as domestic servants and labourers, are now in a majority in some of the smaller states.
"In no other part of the world are there states where a majority of residents are expatriate workers", the Bahraini Minister for Labour, Dr Majeed Al Alawi, told reporters. "We are not against expatriate labour, but we need to organise our economy in such a way that migrant labour is not transferred into permanent residence".
The Gulf states had to maintain their Arab and Islamic culture and would not permit demand for migrant labour to permanently change the demographics of the area, Dr Al Alawi said.