Panel wants stronger Arab ties to protect US interests

Safeguarding US interests in the Arab world depends on building stronger bilateral relations. This is what an advisory committee composed of 19 former government officials and regional experts said.

William Cohen, former US Secretary of Defence, and Ed Gabriel, former US Ambassador to Morocco, are the chairmen of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) committee that was formed a year ago to examine US policies and relations in the Arab world.

The committee has travelled extensively throughout the region, conducting interviews in several countries. The report is titled The road ahead: US-Arab relations in the 21st century.

Although peace in the Middle East is closer now than it has been in years, the report said, the United States must establish two new initiatives.

One plan should be to promote economic and governance improvements, and the other should be to foster the next generation of Arab leaders "to overcome strong negative Arab sentiment and secure enduring regional stability".

"Right now, a significant opportunity exists not only to make progress on peace in the Middle East, that has eluded us for generations, but also to look ahead at other critical challenges that sit beyond the horizon," the report said.

"Our wide array of interests in the region, including stopping terrorism, protecting our allies and ensuring energy security, cannot be safeguarded unless we forge stronger partnerships with those countries with which we share long-term goals."

"Our government-to-government relations are too often adversarial, narrow in scope, spread out across too many different programmes and focused on short-term crises, rather than long-term solutions," the report said.

Another recommendation is the creation of an Arab Partnership Foundation. The foundation would "support the next generation of Arab leaders, organisations and thinkers and the collaborations necessary to make them successful".

The writer is a Washington-based Arab journalist