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."