Don’t group regional issues

dubai — The challenge for 2017 is to focus on local issues in each country rather than group regional problems as being global, advised Ghassan Salamé, former political advisor to the UN Mission in Iraq and Lebanon’s former minister of culture.

“It remains to be seen whether (the US presidentelect) Trump will support regional leaders in the fight against Daesh,” added Salamé who talked about the State of the Arab World Politics in 2017.

At the same session, Egypt’s former foreign minister Nabil Fahmy said: “The over-reliance on people outside the Arab world to solve our issues has held us back. If we want to reform, we need to be prepared for a long path ahead.”

“We need to be pro-active in putting forward the Arab vision so we can manage the discussion among ourselves. If we wait for the American vision we will not achieve anything, he added.

Fahmy pointed out that the “US is talking of its interest not principles. US interest is given primacy when they talk to Iran or Syria… Neither Trump or Putin wants a US-Russia confrontation in Syria, so they will try and contain it.”

“The incoming leader of the US is not an ideological president. The common tone in his discourse is that he is a ‘man of deals’. (Trump) said he is just a deal-maker.”

angel@khaleejtimes.com