Neighboring Arab countries cool to Saddam

AMMAN , Jordan -- Ahmed al-Omari has taken part in dozens of demonstrations for Arab causes since 1956, when he joined students streaming into the streets to protest the British-French attack on Egypt after it nationalized the Suez Canal.

The last was during the 1991 Gulf War when al-Omari burned American and Israeli flags to celebrate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's firing of Scud missiles on Israeli cities.

For al-Omari -- and many of his fellow Palestinians and other Arabs -- pan-Arab leaders like former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Saddam were the embodiment of Saladin, the 12th century Muslim hero who expelled the Christian Crusaders from Palestine.

But if a major war breaks out in Iraq now, al-Omari says he will simply shut his downtown clothing shop, go home and follow the war news on television. Like many Arabs, he feels a sense of frustration and even betrayal by his one-time idol.

"We are fed up with Saddam's wars and confrontations. They brought nothing but defeats, humiliation and disasters," al-Omari told The Associated Press.

Like many people in the Middle East, al-Omari hopes any war on Iraq will be short and will target only Saddam's regime. He said his deepest worry is about the Iraqis who might be killed or suffer, not about Iraq's leadership.

For years, Saddam skillfully played to Arab public opinion. But Jordanian political analyst Raja Talab said the Iraqi leader's popularity is waning and many Arabs now blame him for "leading the area to the edge of another catastrophe."

"People look for real heroes who can deliver and Saddam is only a drowning, defeated ruler who is clinging to the wreckage," Talab said.

Throughout the Arab world, governments are afraid of the instability that war could bring, damaging their economies and perhaps giving radicals a chance to stir up populations already angry with their autocratic leaders.

Arab states, including Jordan, have sought to block any pro-Iraqi demonstrations, making it difficult to judge how much public opinion about Saddam has shifted.

There are signs Saddam's popularity is diminishing in the Arab world and that governments are aware of it -- but are still uncertain of the full impact of a war on their own countries.

Talab, the political analyst, pointed out that Jordanian officials -- and many Jordanian citizens like al-Omari -- are worried war could upset the fragile economy and bring a wave of Iraqi refugees to Jordan, sandwiched between Iraq and Israel.

Many Jordanians, about half of whom are of Palestinian origin, also fear Israel's hardline government could use the war as an excuse to expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan.

In neighboring Syria, the government of President Bashar Assad opposes an American military strike against Iraq, but it voted in the U.N. Security Council for the latest resolution on Iraq's disarmament that was submitted by Washington.

Syrian political analyst Haitham Kilani said Assad's government is watching popular opinion and trying to balance its dealings with Iraq and the United States. "People cannot solve such major problems, but governments can," he said.

Part of the balance is economic: Iraq has offered Jordan and Syria favorable trade terms and large quantities of free oil.

In Egypt, the most populous Arab state and an influential political force in the region, the streets have been quiet despite talk of support for Iraq.

Even as Arab countries seek to head off a war, they speak not of Saddam but of the harm that could befall Iraq's people.

Iraq and its allies, meanwhile, still try to play the so-called pan-Arab card, seeking to portray the conflict with the United States as an American plot aimed not just at the Iraqis, but at the wider Arab world.

"The American-Zionist assault does not target Iraq only, but the entire Arab and Islamic nation with the aim of controlling its oil wealth," said Col. Mounir Makdah, leader of a dissident faction of Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement, in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon.

Arafat was an outspoken supporter of Saddam during the Gulf War. His relations with wealthy Gulf states suffered and many Palestinians working in the Gulf were expelled.