Arabs doubt increase will get results

Cairo: US President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops will fail to bring peace to Iraq and could aggravate a conflict in which tens of thousands of people have already died, Arab analysts said yesterday.

Bush, taking advice mainly from a small group of ideologues, has misunderstood the nature of the conflict and is wrong to think that a military solution is possible, they added.

A few analysts in the Gulf, where the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was less unpopular than in the rest of the Arab world, said more troops might help but it could also be too late.

Bush's plan, announced early yesterday in the Middle East, overlooks or rejects policy options which the analysts said were essential - dialogue with Iran and Syria, and a determined US effort to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"America is no longer in the driving seat. It has lost Iraq and adding a few thousands troops is not going to help because the situation is beyond fixing," said Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political scientist in the UAE.

Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, said: "The Bush plan is based on many erroneous assumptions such as thinking that a military solution is possible. I think that is impossible."

Hilal Khashan, political scientist at the American University of Beirut, said extra troops would not make a difference and the Iraqi authorities could not impose order, as envisaged in Bush's plan. "The Iraqi military has been a recruiting ground for militias and death squads. I can't see the Iraqi military helping to restore law and order. They are an expanded militia, a party to the conflict."

Algerian newspaper Le Quotidien d'Oran said Washington would not have the means or political resources to disarm the militias or stop insurgent attacks against US troops.

Abdullah Bishara, president of the Kuwait-based Diplomatic Centre for Strategic Studies, said more US troops should have been sent long ago.