If US goes into Iraq … Will ‘War on terror’ be lost? [Archives:2002/49/Front Page]

Arab governments would curtail their cooperation with the American “war on terrorism” if the United States attacks Iraq, a senior Yemeni official said this week.
“I can’t imagine that war in Iraq will allow any country to go about the war against terrorism as business as usual,” said Abdul-Karim Al Iryani, a former Yemeni prime minister and senior adviser to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
“It will negatively affect the cooperation of almost every Arab country, at least during the war. After the war, maybe people will come back,” Iryani told reporters.
He also told the CNN network that he doubted that the US would install a stable government in Baghdad.
“Iraq will go into a civil war swamp and there will not be anyone who could rule Iraq if the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown,” he said.
He said only with democracy, free education, and economic development, one could eradicate extremism in the Islamic word.
The Yemeni government has been one of the most cooperative in the Arab world in the U.S. campaign to track down members of the Al Qaida group, blamed for the September 2001 suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
On November 3 it allowed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to kill six Al Qaida suspects with an unmanned Predator plane, which fired a missile at their car in the Yemeni desert.
Iryani, a key figure in coordination between Yemen and the United States, said his government drew a clear line however between the “war on terror” and war with Iraq.
He said that war on Iraq would create instability throughout the Arab world and that he doubted the United States would find it easy to install a stable government.
“Who in the world will have the genius ability to rule Iraq when the regime is removed by force? I can’t imagine how it will be. I fear there will be many civil wars,” he said.
Iryani said the answers to extremism in the Muslim world were democracy, liberal education and economic development.
He added: “I’m not going to say the reason for what happened in New York (on September 11) is the Arab-Israeli conflict. But one of the strongest cards in the hands of the extremists today is the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

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