An international conference on a Middle East peace settlement has taken place this week in Annapolis. In last week's column, I expressed cautious optimism about its outcome. There is good reason to say that my forecast has been fulfilled. The efforts by all parties to the peace process - and among the "outside" parties I would single out Russia and the United States, which this time around have acted in synch - have provided a fresh impetus to advance on all tracks of the peace process. That is the main outcome. The next "stop" will be in Moscow, where a follow-up meeting will take place in several months.

Today, however, I would like to devote my commentary to another Middle East issue - Iraq. Annapolis has pushed it to the background. Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq is taking a new twist. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has asked the UN to extend the presence of the occupation force until July 8, 2008. Prior to that, he agreed with the United States that after that date, the American troops in the country would be concentrated at special bases to be set up on Iraqi territory. The U.S. is leaving Iraq, but it will stick around. Even now, the American occupation forces are not scattered around the country, but concentrated in specially designated areas. What is going to change then? Only that the Americans will cease to be called occupiers. That will create yet another illusion that the Iraq problem has been resolved, which is extremely important amid the ongoing presidential campaign in the U.S. Garrulous advocates of the present administration and its policy will say: see, the US has fulfilled its historic mission - it crushed the Saddam Hussein regime and handed over control of the country to a national government. If some of these apologists are daring and defiant enough, they will add: to a democratic government.

This is one aspect of the matter. Another is that the constant (the word is quite appropriate in this context) U.S. military presence in Iraq will, without any doubt, be used primarily for anti-Iranian purposes. These bases will, among other things, be used to monitor and control the development of events in the Persian Gulf, from where the U.S. receives the bulk of its oil imports.

There is reason to believe that in Iraq itself, U.S. representative are currently engaged in looking for solutions that, from their perspective, will help more or less quietly to transfer the military presence in the country to the "base principle." Initially, the United States placed its bet on Iraqi émigrés and refugees, hoping that they would be able to place post-Saddam Iraq under control. They were brought back to Baghdad, but before long, it turned out that they had no social or political base in Iraq - furthermore, they became involved in corruption practices.

Then the U.S. banked on the Shiite majority, hoping that it would "rectify" the situation in Iraq as Washington saw fit. That did not work out either. It turned out that the Iraqi Shiites are strongly susceptible to Iranian influence. Moreover, the government that they lead is ineffective, while the Shiites themselves have divided into two opposing camps. Young Shiite cleric al Sadr, relying on the Mahdi Army [an Iraqi paramilitary force created in June 2003. - Ed.], launched a campaign against al Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The prize in that fight was control over revenues from oil sales and customs duties. Soon afterward, not only the Sunnis, unhappy with their secondary position, but also al Sadr's followers left the government, as did the Shiite Hizb al Fadila party.

Added (2008-08-01, 8:40 Am)
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A resultant power vacuum was accompanied by insurgency action, mainly by the Sunnis.

Then it became known that U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence service representatives met with Iraqi Baathists and other members of the Sunni resistance movement in Jordan, on the Dead Sea. On the Iraqi side, the meeting was attended by a number of groups as part of two insurgent coalitions - the Jihad and Reform Front and the Political Council for the Iraqi Resistance. The al Hayat Arab daily, which reported on the meeting, maintains that the Iraqi side was also represented by an extremely radical Baath wing, led by former Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim [al Duri]. U.S. representatives denied that, since American negotiators sitting at the same table with a person on a wanted list would look too unseemly.

According to reliable sources, the U.S. offered representatives of the Sunni resistance a six-month ceasefire in four provinces - al Anbar, Diala Salaheddin, and Nineveh. The U.S. negotiators also pledged to halt mopping up operations in Sunni populated areas and to release Sunni gunmen from prison. For their part, the Iraqis demanded a time frame for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Could that be the reason for a subsequent meeting between the Iraqi prime minister and U.S. representatives with the objective to preserve the US military presence in Iraq, but without the status of an occupation force?

There is evidence that the Americans are providing arms and money to certain Sunni tribes in the provinces of al Anbar and Diala, as well as in Tikrit. There is every reason to believe that the occupation authorities are ready to turn their face toward Iraq's Sunnis, on which until recently the Americans have only turned their back.

Will these maneuvers help to stabilize the situation in Iraq? I strongly doubt it. Consider, for example, the latest stand-off between the Kurds and the Iraqi government. On November 27, Prime Minister al Maliki announced the cancellation of 15 oil production contracts in Iraqi Kurdistan that the Kurdish authorities had previously signed with foreign companies. The Kurds categorically rejected that decision, effectively upholding their right to economic independence as an autonomous region within Iraq. The conflict is bound to grow. The border issue is sure to add fuel to the fire: the Kurds insist that the Kirkuk district be included into their region.

Returning to the Annapolis experience, one would like to hope that the situation in Iraq could be normalized not through the U.S.'s unilateral maneuvering, but through international efforts. Russia has repeatedly proposed holding a representative conference with the participation of all political forces of Iraq and neighboring Iran, Syria and Turkey. The UN and other international organizations, as well as the

G-8, could also participate in such a conference.

By Yevgeny Primakov, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences