Asked about the Arab peace initiative that was re-endorsed by the Arab leaders during their summit meeting in Riyadh last March, he said the initiative "was the best thing (done) by the Arabs to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict."

But he blamed the United States and Israel for the failure to push forward the Arab peace initiative first adopted during the Arab summit of 2002, held in Beirut.

"Unfortunately, five years have passed without any interest (in the initiative) by the United States in particular and Israel for known reasons," he said. "Arabs too were not as enthusiastic about it as they are now ... to exploit the real opportunity to achieve a just and comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian cause."

But according to al-Qurbi, the Arab peace initiative is facing three challenges: "a weak Israeli government, a U.S. administration that has less than two years left in power and the inter-Palestinian struggle" between the Hamas and the Fatah movements.

"The Arab peace initiative needs intensified and concentrated efforts, particularly regarding the U.S. position and the Palestinian differences," he said, calling on the Palestinian conflicting parties "to engage in a deep dialogue to define their future political approach."

On Yemeni-Iranian ties, which were strained after Sanaa accused Tehran of supporting a renewed uprising among Yemen's Zaydi Shiite minority, al-Qurbi emphasized that his country was eager to maintain good relations with Iran.

He expressed his hope that Iran's nuclear problem would be solved by diplomatic means and that the United States would refrain from striking it "because the results will be disastrous -- not only on Iran, but the whole region."

Asked about the battles between Yemeni government troops and the followers of Abdel Malak al-Houthi which have been raging in the southern district of Saada, near the Saudi border, since last January, al-Qurbi said he hoped the Zaydi Shiite rebels would respond to Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh's call to hand over their heavy weapons and engage in dialogue with the government.

"We hope that our brothers (al-Houthi's followers) would go back to reason and accept the president's call," he said, referring to Saleh's Unification Day announcement. Last Tuesday the Yemeni president announced that military operations against the rebels in Saada -- which have left nearly 2,000 killed and wounded so far, according to independent reports -- would be halted.

Saleh halted the military operations, al-Qurbi said, to give a group of Yemeni religious leaders en route to Saada the chance to negotiate with al-Houthi's followers.

"We hope that they (al-Houthi rebels) will announce that they will stop violence because violence cannot be stopped by one party while the other party uses it for its own interest," he said.

The current outbreak is the third round of deadly clashes between Yemeni government troops and al-Houthi's followers since fighting began in 2004.

Asked whether such clashes had become a war of attrition necessitating a clear-cut military operation, al-Qurbi said that his government had offered the rebels opportunities for dialogue from the very beginning.

"There was an attempt to convince them to end their rebellion, return to their villages and stop the violence, but we always reached a dead end. When their actions of violence increased, the government was forced to face this with violence," he said.

When asked if the Yemeni military was strong to end the ongoing clashes on its own, or whether it needed direct U.S. assistance, al-Qurbi said: "The terrorist actions, especially when they turn into a gang war, need time (to be uprooted)," citing U.S. and NATO operations against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq which have been dragging on for years "despite all their technology."

Al-Qurbi denied that his country had made any request for assistance from the United States in the battle to quell the rebellion in Saada, but said he hoped that al-Houthi's followers "would finally realize that what they are doing at the end would lead to their destruction and the destruction of the country."

It is true, al-Qurbi said, that Saleh had extended "an olive branch (to the rebels), but at the same time the others know that we are serious in facing them if they pursue violence."

But what do al-Houthi's followers want, and are they supported by outside parties? Do they want a larger political share in the country, or would they want to go as far as overthrowing President Saleh?

According to al-Qurbi, "their demands are not clear."

Earlier this month, Yemen summoned its ambassadors from Iran and Libya "for consultation" after al-Qurbi accused both Tehran and Tripoli of supporting the rebel tribesmen in Saada. The move prompted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to send an envoy to Sanaa to assure the Yemeni officials of his country's eagerness in preserving Yemen's "stability and unity" and opposing "any rebellion."

Could the continued battles against al-Houthi followers turn Yemen, which is already engaged in fighting terrorism and al-Qaida on its soil, into a battlefield for confronting other Muslim fundamentalist groups?

The fear, al-Qurbi said, is that "some internal and foreign parties would undoubtedly take advantage of this situation (to spread in the country) ... But what is important is that Yemen does not turn into a place for settling accounts."

earlier related report
Commentary: Islamic deja vu
by Arnaud De Borchgrave
Washington (UPI) May 21 - Muslim peoples excel at expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. So wrote Patrick J. Buchanan six months before Operation Iraqi Freedom. "They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon," he reminded us.

Lacking institutional memory, Congress is blissfully unaware the history now being written on Capitol Hill will add yet another chapter -- "they also drove the Americans out of Iraq." And the scenario is eerily reminiscent of the way Congress ensured a U.S. defeat in Vietnam when lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to sever any further military assistance to our Vietnamese allies.

Betrayed by Congress, the South Vietnamese quickly understood there was no point in further resistance. In Hanoi, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap had to improvise a general offensive in 1975 to take Saigon, which he reckoned (in his memoirs) was an opportunity that was still at least two years away.

Similarly, Giap, who once said the United States could not be defeated militarily, conceded the 1968 Tet Offensive was an unmitigated disaster for Hanoi. And he was astonished to see that Walter Cronkite, America's most trusted newsman, had declared Tet a decisive defeat for the United States. Most of the Saigon-based press corps followed "Uncle Walter's" lead.

Giap defeated the French empire -- in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. But America's defeat was on the home front and in the halls of Congress. Hanoi achieved final victory with a 2,500-year-old blueprint for victory -- Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." The template was undermining home front morale. In Hanoi in September 1972, this reporter met two French communists who bragged about their work organizing anti-war demonstrations in the United States.

Israel's Martin van Creveld, one of the world's foremost military historians, has drawn many parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. With 17 books on military history and strategy, he is required reading for U.S. officers. He says that almost all countries that have tried to fight similar wars since World War II have ended up losing.

The multiparty electoral system, says van Creveld, has institutionalized and consolidated Iraq's ethnic, sectarian and tribal divisions -- precisely the sort of thing that should be avoided when attempting to democratize. Free elections and democracy are not synonymous.

"Vietnamization," the process whereby U.S. troops handed control to local forces in South Vietnam (ARVN), is now under way in Iraq. But van Creveld says the chances of that succeeding look even bleaker than they did in Vietnam. The new Iraqi army is weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than ARVN was.

Worse still, in van Creveld's judgment, there is no equivalent of the North Vietnamese regime poised to take over. Those who argued against the invasion are apprehensive about what might happen once U.S. troops leave. Terrorists from around the world were attracted to Iraq but they didn't go for the "flypaper." A few were caught. But Iraq spawned a new generation of terrorists who acquired the kind of expertise that can be used in other parts of the world for a long time to come.

Iran is the real victor in Iraq, and the world must now learn to live with a nuclear Iran, says van Creveld, the way we learned to live with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China. But what about Israel -- and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe out Israel? "We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack," he answers in the June 2007 issue of Playboy magazine. "We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons ... thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany."

"Our armed forces are not the 30th strongest in the world, but rather the second or third," according to the Dutch-born van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem since 1971. "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets that can launch them at targets in all directions. Most European capitals are targets of our air force ... We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under."

As for a future Palestinian state emerging from the present chaos in Gaza, van Creveld doesn't see it. In any event, Israel should not attempt to facilitate the birth of a stillborn, failed or failing state. Some 40,000 Israeli settlers now on the east side of the physical barrier should be brought back to live in the protected settlements on the west side. This would leave some 30,000 Israelis in Palestinian territory. Next, everything between the barrier and the pre-1967 war border should be officially annexed to Israel.

Thus, the Palestinians would be left to their own devices to fight among themselves -- or to make peace and build a country with the economic assistance of the Arab oil producers of the Gulf. This could also be a recipe for another half century of on-again-off-again Arab-Israeli warfare.

earlier related report
Analysis: What is Fatah al-Islam?
by Claude Salhani
Washington (UPI) May 23 - Is there something sinister in the timing of the sudden surge of violence that erupted between the Lebanese army and an al-Qaida-affiliated group called Fatah al-Islam around the northern city of Tripoli?

What is Fatah al-Islam? Who supports, arms and funds its members? And why did they suddenly manifest themselves in such a violent manner at this time?

Regretfully, these are questions to which answers will probably never be found. Just more puzzles to be added to the never-ending Lebanese political saga.

Many Lebanese will point to the fact that the fighting shifts the focus from the pending international tribunal set to hear the case of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A coincidence in timing? Perhaps, but nevertheless this crisis does nothing to help the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, already burdened by a serious schism between the country's Sunni and Shiite communities, as well as a division among the Christian community.

The only good news, if one may be optimistic under such circumstances, is that Hezbollah has come out in support of the Lebanese army in its fight against the shadowy Islamist militia. And in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem was quoted by the Syrian news agency SANA as saying, "We renounce Fatah al-Islam. Members of the group are wanted by the Syrian security services."

The group, led by a Palestinian named Shaker al-Abssi, is believed to number around 200 well-trained and well-equipped fighters, most of whom are Palestinians. But it includes various other nationalities: Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis, Bangladeshis and others. Fatah al-Islam broke away from Fatah al-Intifada, which in turn had earlier seceded from Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

At the time when Arafat went to rebase in Tunis, the rebel faction headed for Damascus.

When the Lebanese army first engaged the group in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp it was welcomed by the camp's population, who, according to some reports, were not too pleased by the presence of the Islamist group that imposed itself on the refugees. But the situation quickly changed when the Lebanese army met stiff resistance and began using tanks and heavy artillery against the group.

Casualties were high as the fighting escalated. Reports from northern Lebanon say Fatah al-Islam lost at least 20 fighters in one day while the Lebanese army lost about 30 soldiers. There are also an unknown number of dead and wounded civilians caught in the cross fire. Some reports speak of "hundreds of dead." Humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have not been able to enter the camp due to heavy fighting.

Fatah al-Islam is a relative newcomer to the Lebanese political scene. They were unheard of until last year. Some observers say the group was created along the model of al-Qaida. Some reports say Fatah al-Islam is most probably sponsored by Syria, though Syria denies having anything to do with the group.

But according to a Stratfor intelligence brief, "It appears Damascus helped facilitate Abssi's new base of operations, and has used him as a point-man to manage the group's activities." Nahr al-Bared, continues the report, is located close enough to the Syrian border to allow easy transit between Syria and Lebanon. "Fatah al-Islam could not have used force to take control over the camp without strong backing from Syrian intelligence officers in the region," says the Stratfor intelligence report.

This battle will test the resolve of the Lebanese army, which, for fear of being fractured along sectarian lines as had been the case during the 1975 civil war, has so far managed to stay away from being dragged into the quagmire that is Lebanese politics.

The army -- so far -- has the overwhelming support of the population and enjoys the backing of the United States and the European Union, primarily France, Germany and Italy.

So who is this leader of the renegade Palestinian Fatah al-Islam? Shaker al-Abssi, 51, was born in Palestine, but his family eventually fled after the establishment of Israel. Not much is known about him other than it is believed he had spent three years in a Syrian jail on terrorism charges.

Abssi admitted to having collaborated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. He and Zarqawi were sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian court for the murder of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat who was shot in the Jordanian capital, Amman, in 2002.

According to intelligence officials cited by the New York Times, Abssi moved to Lebanon in November 2006, setting up his base of operations in the Nahar al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near the northern city of Tripoli.

Lebanese authorities blamed Fatah al-Islam for the bombing earlier this year of two commuter buses carrying Lebanese Christians. Abssi later denied the allegations in an interview with the New York Times.

Stratfor deduces that, "With Lebanese presidential elections and the fate of an international tribunal to try Syrian suspects over the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri looming, political stability in Lebanon will continue to remain hostage to the negotiations Washington holds with Damascus and Tehran over Iraq."

In other words, what is happening in northern Lebanon today is a natural extension of the war in Iraq. It should send a clear signal that unless that war is settled, the violence witnessed around Nahr al-Bared could spread and engulf other parts of the region.

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