OIC meeting will not slam U.S. strikes: Analysts
OIC meeting will not slam U.S. strikes: Analysts
Miral Fahmy, Reuters, Doha
Islamic nations meeting on Wednesday will not condemn the U.S.- led strikes on Muslim Afghanistan, mainly because they are fed up with the extremist Taliban movement, analysts and officials said on Tuesday.
Foreign ministers representing the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are instead expected to appease their seething populations at the emergency meeting in the Gulf state of Qatar by expressing solidarity with the impoverished Afghans.
They will also try to ensure that Washington does not extend its war on terrorism to any other Muslim country.
Ordinary Muslims and Arabs have slammed the U.S.-led assault against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's ruling Taliban which is protecting him.
But most of their governments have remained silent after years of criticizing the Taliban's hardline Islamist ideology and its harboring of Arab and Muslims militants.
Only Syria, Iraq and Iran, hardline states known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric, have so far publicly criticized the strikes.
Some officials said the 56-nation Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting was likely to face difficulties in forging a consensus between Muslim nations opposed to the strike and those who tacitly supported it.
But analysts point out that only one Muslim country, Pakistan, recognizes the Taliban and that bin Laden's pledges to purge Islamic countries of their pro-Western leaders have intensified their desire to be rid of him.
"Most Arab and Muslim nations silently approve of the U.S. strikes but they cannot confront their people with this support without risking their legitimacy," said Hussein Amin, a Middle East analyst based in Cairo.
"On the one hand, they see the Taliban as an embarrassment to the faith and they also do not want to jeopardize U.S. aid or support. But on the other hand, they have to deal with rising anti-U.S. sentiment," he added.
Iran called for the emergency OIC meeting, which was intended to formulate a Muslim reaction to last month's suicide attacks on U.S. cities, which Washington blamed on bin Laden, a Saudi-born militant who sees himself as the vanguard of Islam.
Before the U.S. retaliatory strikes, Qatari officials had predicted that the Doha meeting would have no trouble meeting its objectives: agreeing on a common definition of terrorism and a mechanism to grant humanitarian aid to Afghan refugees.
Analysts now expect a final communique that largely focuses on the plight of the Afghans but features little, if any, criticism of the United States.
Another key issue will be renewed support for the Palestinian uprising against Israel, particularly after bin Laden used the emotive issue as a rallying cry in a taped interview on Qatar's widely-watched al-Jazeera network.
"There will be disagreements between Muslim states at the OIC (on the strikes) but they will be resolved by a bland, carefully- worded statement that will express solidarity with the Afghan people and condemn terrorism in general," said a London-based regional researcher who declined to be named.
Mohammed al-Sayid Said of Egypt's Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, said he expected the OIC, led by Arab ministers meeting later on Tuesday, to call on the United States to spare Sudan, Iraq and Syria -- nations on Washington's terrorist list.
"It is very difficult for Islamic countries to stop the war but we can help in drafting its parameters," he said. "The United States should realize that it can't simply change governments as it wills. Muslims are a world power and we should start acting like one."