CAIRO, 30 June 2004 — Middle East governments yesterday welcomed the handover of power in Iraq and mulled normalizing diplomatic ties with Baghdad, as the press remained skeptical of the country’s independence from Washington.
In a statement, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher called the transfer a “positive step on the right road leading to Iraqis taking control of their own affairs and total sovereignty.”
“That the Iraqi people are autonomous and masters of their own affairs is part of an overall process driving stability,” he said, in comments echoed by other top officials across the region.
Although Egypt has a diplomatic mission in Baghdad, Maher said full normalization of relations broken off after the 1991 Gulf War had not yet been discussed. Nevertheless the Cairo press castigated Monday’s power transfer as a small step on a giant road and belittled the ceremony as something akin to a funeral. “In a scene bordering on the ridiculous, the United States transferred power to an interim Iraqi government. The formalities took place in the atmosphere of a funeral,” said the independent Nahdet Misr daily.
In occupied Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was expected to tell the Iraqi people that the Jewish state would like to have diplomatic relations but will leave it to them to decide.
Kuwait, invaded by Saddam Hussein’s former army in 1990 and occupied for seven months, was the first Middle East power to announce it was resuming diplomatic ties with Baghdad.
Iran said the US transfer of power to Iraqis was a “positive step” toward the holding of free elections and withdrawal of foreign troops.
“The handover of Iraq’s sovereignty to the interim government and the end of occupation based on UN Security Council Resolution 1546 is a positive step,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
“The interim government is expected to provide grounds for the restoration of full sovereignty, the real end of the occupation, and free and timely general elections,” he added.
“It is now different from the time of the occupation,” said Asefi, quoted by Iran’s official media. “The wrong policies of the occupiers have brought about terrible, insecure conditions in Iraq, and the Iraqi people must do all they can to restore the damage and negative effects left behind by the occupiers.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri hailed the handover as “an important step on the way toward ending the ordeal of the Iraqi people, as well as the killings and destruction that it is suffering.”
Meanwhile, the Jordanian press said it hoped that the transfer of power would prove a turning point in the history of the kingdom’s eastern neighbor.
“What we fear the most is that Iraq will reach an ethnic and religious confrontation and that means placing Iraq on the edge of divisions,” said the independent Al-Arab Al-Yawm.
