Iraq Press Roundup

The Kurdish Al Ittihad newspaper said Tuesday in its editorial that military and political explosions in the Middle East -- especially Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon -- have led to and will lead to the formation of barriers that limit vision, and force unprotected human beings to fight each other.

The editorial, with the headline "The Middle East: Current equations and the future possibilities," said: "What is happening in the region now is a result of crossed goals that are inconsistent."

It said there are entangled factors that affect the goals, making the international challenge economically important because of the underground wealth, and strategically important because if the region's geographic location.

The paper said that after the United States was recognized as the sole global superpower, observers and analysts expected that the region would become part of plans to suit the international strategic transformation.

"What supported this direction is the big U.S. coalition support to expel the Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the Madrid conference to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict," it said.

It said that the Soviet Union, then, was a "body without a head"; Iran, just out of a war, was militarily and economically exhausted, Iraq's future was unknown after losing the international support and became oppressed with debts and Syria was looking for a way to stay in power.

"In spite of all the elements that make it possible for the U.S. to make a change in the Middle East, the allies showed a desire to keep the situations without change," it said.

The paper said the Europeans and others had no will, and agreed to U.S. decisions.

The paper, loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said that the main weakness of the U.S. policy was the contrast between the announced goals and the implications on the ground, which takes away from U.S. credibility.

"More than any other project that left doubts in people is the desire to distribute democracy," the paper said.

It said supporting democracy in the Middle East was a "secondary" U.S. goal after fighting terrorism.

"The reality is that the U.S. had no step forward to assure the people in the Middle East and convince them that democracy is coming. ... The U.S. has the strongest relationships with nondemocratic leaderships in the region," the paper said.

It said the United States overlooks the violation of democracy by Israel against the Palestinians and Turkey against the Iraqi Kurds. It said Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco still kept reforms away from their people.

The editorial said these reasons give terrorists more freedom to recruit people and convince the world what they believe in is worthy.