Mideast leaders seek their own solutions for region

For many of the Middle East's leaders, the upshot of the swirling American debate over Iraq is that when, as seems likely, the US withdraws it will leave behind an ongoing war.

So the region's powers – US allies Jordan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and its foes Syria and Iran – are engaging in new diplomatic efforts, largely aimed at preventing Iraq's fighting from causing broader turmoil.

While in some cases the talks are only tangentially about Iraq, this high-level dialogue appears to reflect a new reality: With US prestige crippled by the war, regional actors are bypassing the West to forge partnerships and find solutions on their own.

Thursday, Jordan's King Abdullah II, who has recently been more vocal about restarting Arab-Israeli negotiations, invited Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah, locked in deadly street battles this past week, to hash out their differences in Jordan on Sunday.

In Beirut, Arab League negotiator Amr Moussa seems to be making some progress at ending the political crisis between the country's ruling coalition and the Shiite militant party Hizbullah.

But in all cases, Iraq is the volatile backdrop, specifically its potential to become a proxy arena for the region's problems.

A good example is Israel. Watching the unfolding tragedy in Iraq and with its own war this summer against the Shiite militants of Hizbullah in mind, it's reaching out to the Jordanians, the Saudis, and the Lebanese to find solutions to its own security problems.

"In the late 1990s, Israel's worldview was that 'we are the military superpower in the region and we are very closely allied with the world's only superpower. So we have very little to worry about,' " says Gidi Grinstein, a former peace negotiator for the Israeli government and now president of the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv think tank.

Now, he says, "you have America in a situation of very serious overstretch, unable to get a decisive victory across the region ... we have to look for new partners, alliances, and means of cooperation."

Before Sunday's meeting between Fatah and Hamas was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert flew to Jordan Tuesday to talk with Abdullah about reviving failed peace talks with the Palestinians.

Diplomatic activity is also swirling in Lebanon, where a domestic squabble over the country's sectarian power-sharing arrangement, also draws together the competing interests of the Sunni Arab powers of the region on the one side, and Shiite Iran, on the other.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, returned to Beirut Wednesday, where he met with an Iranian official and Lebanese leaders from the ruling party and Hizbullah, before traveling to Damascus to meet with that country's president, Bashar Assad.

His regional hopscotch is an effort to cobble together a deal that would probably see pressure lessened on Syria over its political role in Lebanon in return for Hizbullah, an ally of Syria and Iran's, agreeing to a smaller role in a new Lebanese government than it has been demanding so far. The current Beirut government, in turn, is heavily backed by both the US and by Saudi Arabia, which sees it as a bulwark against the expansion of Iranian influence in the region.

From Iraq to Lebanon and in the capitals of Amman and Cairo, the perception of Iran as a potential threat is driving the new engagement and is making for unusual alliances in which the interests of a state like Israel's are being closely aligned with those of the Saudi Arabian monarchy.

In a speech in Dubai Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair starkly summed up the views of the many governments that fear the expansion of Iranian power.

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