Sud­denly Con­doleezza Rice remem­bered that Iraq is part of the Arab world, repeat­ing the word “Arab” 7 times in her speech in 30 min­utes, but her call or “instruc­tion” did not need more than 24 hours to get 5 Arab coun­tries to react pos­i­tively to Rice’s orders.

M of A asks what the “Arab street” will think [when they hear Rice’s call], remem­ber he asks about the “Arab street” not the “Arab leaders”.

Here is the answer and the first reac­tion on UAE [U.S. ally coun­try] al-Ittihad news­pa­per op-ed, where the writer “Dr. Sa’ad Ajmi” admits that the Gulf-Countries are not con­vinsed of nor­mal­iz­ing the rela­tions with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment but they have no choice [U.S. pres­sure]:

It no secret, the U.S. demands to nor­mal­ize the rela­tions with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and send ambas­sadors to Bagh­dad as a form of sup­port, But the Amer­i­cans clos­est allies in the region — the Gulf states — are not eager for the diplo­matic rela­tions with Baghdad.…for sev­eral reasons:

The Gulf States — except for Kuwait — were against the war to top­ple Sad­dam Hus­sein (at least pub­licly), and felt that the con­se­quences are the United States problem.

The hes­i­ta­tion of send­ing ambas­sadors to Bagh­dad also comes from the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion in Iraq, and there are evi­dence; the kid­nap­ping and killing of the Egypt­ian ambas­sador in Bagh­dad, the abduc­tion of Bahraini ambas­sador who mirac­u­lously escaped, the bomb­ing of the Jor­dan­ian embassy and the kid­nap­ping of Iran­ian diplo­mats, there­fore, send­ing ambas­sadors is an adven­ture risks the lives of those diplo­mats, the Iraqi gov­ern­ment does not con­trol Bagh­dad — not to men­tion the rest of the coun­try. The bloody events that took place last Tues­day in Basra to Mosul in the north, Fal­lu­jah and Ramadi are sad tes­ti­monies to the con­tin­u­ing violence.

Also, the hes­i­ta­tion comes from that the Iraqi gov­ern­ment does not rep­re­sent all Iraqi groups, and the inter­fer­ence between the var­i­ous Iraqi par­ties which most of their min­is­ters left the gov­ern­ment, nor­mal­iz­ing the rela­tions will be seen as by these par­ties as being biased to one group against the other.

For its part, the Iraqi gov­ern­ment has failed to con­vince its neigh­bors that it is a gov­ern­ment rep­re­sents all — or at least most — Iraqis — Sunni and Shi­ite — many par­ties see the cur­rent Iraqi Gov­ern­ment as a sec­tar­ian and the bloody events in Basra in recent weeks is the wit­ness of the Shi­ite par­ties rejec­tion of the “Shi­iaism” of the cur­rent government.

Gulf States are dis­ap­pointed Maliki gov­ern­ment hes­i­ta­tion in resolv­ing the issue of the Arab iden­tity of Iraq, but to talk about the fed­eral divi­sion based on eth­nic lines raises doubts of the Iran­ian ambi­tions, at the same time the Gulf States rec­og­nize the impor­tance of “South Iraq” for the future rela­tions between Iraq and its Arab neighbors.

Each Gulf State has its own agenda in Iraq, notice that the Gulf Sates fears are fad­ing slowly but the con­cerns remain although they required fast contribution.