Posted on 10/10/2002 8:47:47 PM PDT by DTA
Jordan's Prince Hassan: future king of Iraq? Royal humanitarian may be answer to Bush's demand for regime change
Peter Goodspeed National Post
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Daniela Ciuffa, National Post Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, speaking in Winnipeg yesterday, is being touted as a possible replacement for Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
WINNIPEG - For 34 years he was a Crown Prince, who stood a heartbeat away from power and served as the closest advisor and confidant to his brother, the late King Hussein of Jordan.
Now, as the world braces for war with Iraq, Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan is increasingly seen as a possible replacement for Saddam Hussein -- a new King of Iraq -- a man who could almost singlehandedly transform the face of the Middle East.
It is an idea Prince Hassan sidestepped diplomatically yesterday in an exclusive interview with the National Post, saying: "I am not obsessed with red carpet fever."
He sees himself instead as a statesman who has been steeped in the turmoil of the Middle East for 55 years, a humanitarian who wants to bring peace and stability to his troubled region, a man who, for decades, has tried to find understanding among what he calls "the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam."
"I am always available to anyone who wants an agony aunt," he joked, before delivering a special lecture on the "Culture of Peace" at the University of Manitoba.
"I don't like to talk about pecking orders and hierarchies and so forth," he added. "I genuinely am concerned about the future and would like to do whatever I can to promote the concepts I believe in.
"Obviously, the Iraqis have to decide on their own constituent assembly arrangements and what the future holds for them is their choice," he said.
It is neither a "yes" nor a "no" about the likelihood of his heading a rebuilt Iraq. But in the shadowy no man's land of the current crisis, it is as precise a statement of personal availability as can reasonably be made. Especially when George W. Bush, the U.S. President, is insisting on "regime change" in Baghdad, but with no clear indication of who or what might actually replace Saddam's dictatorship.
That is something that deeply concerns Prince Hassan.
He fears not enough attention is being paid to the possible aftermath of a war to depose Saddam.
A defeated Iraq could start to disintegrate, he warns, fuelling ethnic and sectarian violence more horrible than the recent Balkan wars.
A massive military confrontation and loss of life could be just a prelude to a "scorched earth policy" by Saddam that would make the environmental damage inflicted on Kuwait during the Gulf War look like child's play, he added.
"My abiding fear is that, as critical as I am of the state system [in Iraq], the alternative of ethnic and sectarian bloodshed, Balkan-style, from Israel to India, is too horrifying to contemplate.
"I think how wars end is a very important thing to keep in mind."
He stresses he has opposed the use of force against Iraq since the Gulf War in 1990. But, he adds, in the end, war may be inevitable.
"A moment comes, quiet clearly, when the irresistible force meets an immovable object and something has to give," he said. "In the context of the Arab world, I know the consensus is against the use of force, as it is in most parts of the world. But President Bush says war is a last resort. There is still some wiggle room.
"Nevertheless, I think it is very important for the Arab world to make it very clear to Iraq that, at the end of the day, we have done what we can to stay the hand of war. But we also have our interests."
In the last four months, since he publicly attended a London conference of Iraqi exiles who were plotting to overthrow Saddam, Prince Hassan has been seen as someone uniquely qualified by lineage and experience to serve a special role in reintegrating a post-Saddam Iraq into the world community.
Just as the United States used former Afghan King Mohammad Zahir Shah to pull quarrelsome groups of Afghans together in the wake of the overthrow of the Taliban, Prince Hassan, the elder statesman of the Hashemite royal family, may be called upon to transcend the ethnic and political cleavages that are bound to erupt in a post-Saddam Iraq.
In some ways, he offers an elegant solution to the very messy problem of regime change.
The Prince is a well-respected statesman in the Arab world and a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, a member of the 42nd generation of the Hashemite family, which originally served as guardians of Mecca and Medina and, in the last century, established kingdoms in Syria, Iraq and Jordan.
Only Jordan survives as a Hashemite kingdom. But Prince Hassan's great-uncle was the founder of modern Iraq and his cousin, King Faisal II, ruled in Baghdad until 1958, when army rebels slaughtered the 19-year-old ruler and his family in the first of a long string of bloody coups that ultimately led to Saddam's dictatorship.
More modest and less flamboyant than his late brother, King Hussein, Prince Hassan is widely regarded as a man of dignity, knowledge and impeccable connections.
In his 34 years as Crown Prince, he cultivated an international reputation as a writer, speaker, humanitarian and environmentalist.
Today, three years after King Hussein, on his deathbed, replaced him as Crown Prince with his own son, the present King Abdullah of Jordan, Prince Hassan still plays a major role on the international stage. He is president of the Club of Rome, an advisor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, vice-chairman of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue in Geneva, a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, founder of Jordan's Royal Scientific Society and the Arab Thought Forum and president of the Center for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at the University of Oklahoma.
A short barrel of a man, who speaks English like an Oxford don, he is also fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and French, and can get by in a pinch with Spanish, German and Turkish.
He has a boisterous laugh, a solemn frown and loves to discuss abstruse theories in a low, rumbling voice, sprinkling his conversation with quotes from European philosophers and historians and medieval Muslim scholars.
A man with an intimate knowledge of the cultural, religious and political issues of the Middle East, his ascension to power in Iraq would put a friend of the United States in power, help ease tensions with Israel and informally unite Jordan and Iraq as a counterweight to regional rivals such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
More importantly, a restoration of the old Hashemite monarchy might forestall Iraq's disintegration and serve as a bridge leading to a more democratic and inclusive Iraqi state.
"I have been saying this for years and years and years," he says. "Human dignity, elimination of the role of the military in public life and recognition of the fact that Iraq itself is a mosaic culturally are all important."
"I have been in public life for over 54 years, alongside my dead brother," he adds.
"I have, I think, acquired a certain working knowledge of the causes of what has gone wrong in the many parts of our region. To put them right, I think basically one has to talk not of monarchy or republic, but of people -- of the need for consensus, for inclusion, for pluralism."
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