By Hu Dandan, Xinhua
Cairo : U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney wrapped up Tuesday a 9-day regional tour which took him to the announced destinations of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey as well as the surprise ones of Iraq and Afghanistan, during which the issues of Iraq, energy, Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and inevitably, Iran, were discussed.
Iraq: A hard claim of victory after five years in Quagmire
Cheney, known as a major architect of the 2003 U.S. invasion into Iraq, arrived in Baghdad on March 17 on an unannounced visit, where he met Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other political figures and said the United States has made a “successful endeavor” in Iraq, three days before the fifth anniversary of Iraq war, which falls on March 20.
“If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor … and it has been well worth the effort,” he said.
He also defended President George W. Bush’s decision last summer to send some 30,000 extra troops to Iraq, saying that there was a significant progress compared with 10 months ago when he was here, adding security has improved dramatically and the Iraqi leaders have made progress in governing.
Cheney also promised Prime Minister Maliki the unwavering support of the United States.
Yet, he pointed out that “it’s clear there is still a number of major issues that need to be addressed.”
Bush’s decision of launching the Iraq war has been widely criticized at home. According to a latest poll by Washington Post-ABC News, nearly two-thirds of Americans said that the war was not worth fighting and fewer than half think that the United States is making significant progress restoring civil order in Iraq.
On March 24, the U.S. military said with four soldiers killed in a bomb attack, the death toll in Iraq since the 2003 invasion has reached a grim milestone of 4,000. And about 90,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed over the past five years, according to Iraq bodycount, a website that traces the Iraqi war casualties.
Despite a relative lull in security situation since last summer, recently there is a resurge of violence in Iraq largely because of the al-Qaida operation in Iraq. What’s more, the political progress in Iraq has made little headway, raising concerns that the security gains could be lost.
Nevertheless, on early Tuesday March 18, Cheney told U.S. troopsat Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, one of the largest U.S. air bases in Iraq, that the United States will stay the course in Iraq.
“All Americans can be certain that we intend to complete the mission so that another generation of Americans does not have to come back here and do it again,” Cheney said.
Saudi Arabia: Energy big shot revisited
Another fallout of the Iraq war is reflected in the energy market. Five years after the 2003 invasion in Iraq, oil price reached above 100 U.S. dollars a barrel from the pre-Iraq war level of some 20-30 dollars a barrel.
Cheney arrived on March 21 in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally which is the world’s top oil exporter and the only OPEC member that can easily add significant amounts of extra oil to the market.
According to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Cheney discussed with King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz the latest developments in the region, among which the Palestinian issue and the situation in Iraq and Lebanon, as well as “prospects of cooperation between the two countries and ways of boosting them in all fields to serve the interests of the two countries and peoples.”
An advisor to Cheney said before their meeting that their talks would include cooperation to stabilize the oil market.
Cheney’s trip follows a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Bush, who came in January and urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase production, only to get rebuffed.
Though it has been a long-standing U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia had long warned about the consequences of an invasion into Iraq.
In an interview with BBC less than one month before the 2003 invasion, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal has said that any U.S. unilateral military action to topple the then Saddam regime would lead to the destruction of Iraq, and then would destabilize the entire Middle East region by the ensuing extremism and terrorism following the regime change.
Israel, West Bank: Not-that-hard push on peace talks
Cheney arrived in Jerusalem on March 22 and reiterated his country’s support for Israel during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
“America’s commitment to Israel’s security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel’s right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel’s destruction,” he said.
“The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security,” Cheney added.
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Cheney’s spokeswoman Lea Ann McBride as saying that President Bush asked his vice president to come in advance of the president’s return trip in May.
Cheney’s statement was fiercely attacked by Islamic Hamas movement in Gaza as being biased against the Palestinians.
“Cheney’s statements certify that the American Administration is a partner with the Israeli occupation in its crimes committed against our Palestinian people,” Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas spokesman in Gaza told reporters on Sunday, saying that the position could incite great holocaust against Gaza.
During his first visit as U.S. vice president to the West Bank on March 23, whiling saying that the establishment of a Palestinian state is “long overdue”, Cheney warned the Palestinians that strikes on Israel, including rocket attacks, would “kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations” for a Palestinian state.
“A difficult but immutable truth must continue to be told: Terror and rockets do not merely kill innocent civilians, they also kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Cheney said during a joint public appearance with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Cheney said on Saturday in Jerusalem that the current peace negotiations, which restarted in last November with the Annapolis peace conference initiated in the twilight time of Bush’s presidency but suspended due to the continued Israeli settlement plans and Palestinian rocket attacks, will “require tough decisions and painful concessions” from both Israel and the Palestinians.”
However, Cheney made scant gesture urging the Israeli side to stop the settlement activities as required in the Road Map plan, saying Washington’s role is to “facilitate” the talks.
Commenting the visit, Cairo’s Al-Gomhuria daily said in an editorial on Sunday that Cheney’s talks in Israel and West bank are taking up the very bad Palestinian-Israeli relations, and that the U.S. efforts to resuscitate the Middle East peace process might be hampered by a Palestinian frustration after the awareness that the U.S. whip is always there to be used against the Arab side.
The omnipresent topic of Iran
Cheney, known as a hard-liner when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, discussed Iran in most of the destinations in his tour.
According to U.S. and other media reports, the Iranian nuclear issue was on the agenda of the meeting between Cheney and Sultan Qabus bin of Oman, the country having good ties with both Tehran and Washington.
Oman shares with Iran the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic marine passage for some 30 percent of the world’s oil supply. The United States also has access to four air bases in Oman, one of which lies some 50 miles from Iran.
Cheney had also said he was to push for Saudi Arabia to lead other Arab nations in sending an ambassador to Baghdad and step up other government-to-government contacts to curb the influence of Iran in Iraq, which, has been gaining momentum in the fragmented nation.
“If Arab states (are) concerned about Iranian influence in Iraq, one of the ways for them to counter that is to make a commitment to have a presence here as well,” Cheney said during his visit to Baghdad.
In Jerusalem, Cheney also discussed the influence of Iran in the region. “We are…obviously actively involved in dealing with the threats that we see emerging in the region — not only threats to Israel, but threats to the United States as well,” Cheney said in a meeting with President Shimon Peres.
Peres then deliberated that the anti-Israel declarations made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iran’s support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups can not be ignored.
Before leaving for Turkey, Cheney said in Jerusalem after two days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders that Hamas militants and their backers in Iran and Syria were playing the role of spoiler in regional peace talks.
“There’s evidence that Hamas is supported by Iran and Syria, and that they’re doing everything they can to torpedo the peace process,” Cheney told reporters in Jerusalem.
In Ankara on March 24, Cheney said he was concerned about Iran’s nuclear program during a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency.
Cheney had threatened Iran during his last visit in the region last May. Standing on the deck of a U.S. warship, he said “with two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike… And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”
However, given the situation in Iraq, the out-of-control energy price, and the high anti-war sentiment in the United States, the fact that the Bush administration leaves office in about nine months, as well as seen from the lukewarm response Bush himself got during his January anti-Iran swing in the Arab countries, the weight of Cheney’s threat is yet to be seen.