JEDDAH, 3 September — The United States risks plunging the world into chaos by attacking Iraq, Omani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Yussef ibn Alawi warned yesterday as the Gulf states met to review Washington’s threats to overthrow the Baghdad regime.

“If the United States invades Iraq it will cause deep anti-American feeling and will provoke revenge and violence in Arab and Islamic countries,” Alawi said in his speech at the opening session of a two-day meeting here.

The United States has threatened to attack Iraq and try to oust the regime of President Saddam Hussein, whom it accuses of seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.

“The world cannot accept a weakened role for the United Nations. Those who are thinking they can impose a new law for their own benefit, they are pushing the world into instability and chaos,” said Alawi, whose country chairs the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

“The hopes that the embargo on Iraq will be lifted have gone with the wind. Now it is clear that the power which dominates the United Nations is not looking to help the Iraqis or the Arabs,” he said.

“All our hopes of cooperation with our traditional friends are gone and it is clear to us these friends are not looking toward our objectives but they are going to push the situation further into difficulty and trouble in pursuit of their own strategy.”

The GCC groups Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who have individually all expressed opposition to a new war on Iraq.

Officials said with the fear of a US strike on Iraq growing, the ministers were expected to urge Baghdad to work through the United Nations and to allow disarmament inspectors to return to the country.

Alawi also criticized Washington’s stance on Israel and the Palestinians.

“The silence of the international community, especially of the United States, about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians will not help bring peace and stability to the region,” he said.

Alawi urged the major powers to use the Arab peace plan as a basis for a Middle East peace conference and to put pressure on Israel to negotiate.

The Arab peace plan, adopted by Arab states at their March summit in Beirut, calls for Israel to withdraw from all lands captured in the 1967 Middle East in return for a full peace with the Arab world.

The chief diplomats of the Gulf Arab countries were also to hold talks with Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller who is presenting a European-backed plan for peace in the Middle East during a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel.

Meanwhile, Bahraini Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa ibn Salman Al-Khalifa urged all Arab countries to jointly declare their opposition to any military intervention in Iraq, saying the besieged country is no longer a threat to its neighbors.

“We, the Arabs, must voice a clear stance against any new war in the region. A new war will certainly be disastrous; economically, politically and socially not only for our brothers in Iraq but for the whole region and all the Arab states as well,” the official Bahraini media quoted Sheikh Khalifa as saying.

Refuting the insistence of the US officials who have all along been warning of the Iraqi danger to the region’s stability and security, Sheikh Khalifa said because of what has happened to it in the last 10 years, Iraq no longer represents a threat to its neighbors.

“We must take a clear stance and convey it to the US administration, which is considered one of our friends, to make it better aware of the dangers (of any possible war). The administration and President George Bush must be open to their friends in the region to preserve its stability,” he said.

Bahrain’s Islamic and liberal groups and trade unions have joined forces to set up a “people’s committee” to support Iraq.

The People’s Committee to Support the Iraqi People has been established by the representatives of 33 political, labor and trade bodies.

“The committee aims to consolidate the cohesion of both the Bahraini and Iraqi peoples; to provide the Iraqi people with all the necessary support, moral and material, in the face of the American continuous attack; and to seek a wider Arab consensus to resist the US plans that aim to secure an American hegemony over the region’s political and economic resources,” said a statement issued after the meeting.