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A new deal in W. Asia?

Praful Bidwai
SWISS radiation experts have confirmed the worst suspicion of West Asia observers - that the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 in France wasn't natural. Doctors couldn't specify its cause. No autopsy was conducted.
However, after analysing 75 samples from Arafat's recently exhumed belongings, experts have concluded that he was poisoned with highly radioactive polonium-210 - the "smokinggun"!
It's clear that Arafat's killing is a far greater scandal that the 2006 assassination of former Russian spy and critic Alexander Litvinenko, which led to several investigations.
Arafat's killing too should occasion investigation under United Nations auspices to identify and punish the culprits. Arafat was effectively in Israeli custody. His compound was for years surrounded by Israeli troops, who controlled entry and exit, and regulated the movement of goods.
Israel must come clean on the assassination. Its Western protectors, who claim a commitment to truthfulness, fair play, and responsibility to punish crimes, must bring Israel to book. Their failure to do so has encouraged Israel to behave like a rogue state.
Israel has a shameful record of using biological and chemical weapons against non-combatant civilians. In 1948, Zionist gangs working under David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel's first prime minister, adopted a policy of genocide towards Palestine's original inhabitants to evict them and occupy their land.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says these gangs besieged the well-fortified city of Acre, and poisoned its water supply with typhoid bacteria.
According to Avner Cohen, an authority on Israel's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Israel's use of them derives from Ben-Gurion's doctrine: "The destruction of the Palestinian society ... is a necessary condition for the establishment ofthe state of Israel... If Palestinians cannot be removed by ... expulsion, they shall be removed by extermination."
Israel has repeatedly used poison gas against Palestinians. A 2003 BBC documentary "Israel's Secret Weapon" records these activities. Use of such weapons against civilians is punishable under international law. The Israeli state must be brought to justice: in the past, it ignored an International Court of Justice judgment declaring illegal the Apartheid Wall it's constructing to blockade and strangulate Palestinians.
We need a powerful international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign to mount public pressure on Israel - as against apartheid South Africa - to stop behaving like a bandit while illegally occupying Palestine.
Yet, the same state adopts a holier-than-thou attitude to oppose a settlement of the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme through talks with P-5+1 (the Security Council permanent-five plus Germany), which France recently scuppered.
The France-Israel-Saudi Arabia troika stridently opposes any agreement which leads to Iran's recognition as a normal state in return for accepting restraints on
nuclear activities. Saudi Arabia bears an anti-Shia animus against Iran. It's so strongly opposed to reconciliation with Iran that it even peevishly rejected a temporary' Security Council seat.
Israel hates Iran for arming Syria and the Hezbollah, the sole military force which has fought Israel to a standstill. France is keen to exploit Saudi disaffection by selling it arms and containing Iranian influence.
Israel ludicrously demands that sanctions against Iran must not be lifted unless Tehran abandons uranium enrichment altogether - and dismantles its 19,000 centrifuges, which have produced 6,800 kg of 3.5-percent-enriched uranium, and 186 kg of 20-percent-enriched uranium, which can be upgraded into a Hiroshima-type bomb.
Iran is also building a heavy water reactor at Arak, which is an efficient producer of plutonium, usable in Nagasaki-type bombs. Israel wants Iran to be prevented from completing the reactor - preferably by militarily attacking it.
Israel's opposition would have sounded less hypocritical had it not itself had a full-fledged nuclear weapons programme, with a stockpile of200-plus warheads, probably much bigger than India's. Iran has the legal right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
Iran's nuclear activities can be closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, especially if Iran signs its Additional Protocol which mandates strict inspections to ensure that no material is diverted to military uses.
Iran has slowed down its nuclear activities - for the first time in years, according to IAEA inspectors - and installed very few advanced centrifuges since President Hassan Rohani took office in June. Iran has also just signed an agreement with the IAEA allowing its visits to Arak.
An agreement that converts the existing 20-percent-enriched material into plates that cannot be used to make a weapon, and further nuclear transparency, in return for a graded lifting of sanctions, seems do-able.
A precondition is that President Barack Obama doesn't cave in to the naysayers, and works for a thaw with Iran by continuing the conversation begun in October with President Rohani.
Mr. Obama's welcome call for "patience" with Iran is a sign that Washington is showing some recognition of the changed ground realities in West Asia-North Africa, in which Iran has emerged as a major player which provides a counterweight to Saudi and Qatari influence while acting as a positive force in Iraq.
No less important is Iran's potential contribution to stabilising the situation in Afghanistan after the US and its allies withdraw next year. Iran, with India and Russia, has been a major influence in the Northern Alliance, which cooperated with the US in driving al-Qaeda out after September 2001.
Normalisation of US-Iran relations augurs well for the Middle East. It will strengthen the moderates in Iran and make way for more internal democracy and freedom. The moderates can breathe easy because a "regime change" in Iran isn't on the US agenda.
Western acceptance of Iran as a normal state will also exercise a healthy influence on Saudi Arabia. Already, some Saudi commentators are urging that "reconciliation with Iran is in the interest of everyone..."
A new cooperative West Asian security structure could hopefully facilitate a Palestine agreement ending Israeli occupation. That's still a long shot. But major changes seem afoot in West Asia. They must be welcomed.
The writer is an eminent Indian columnist. E-mail: bidwai@bol.net.in