Iraq: The Path To Peace

tompaine: Something is stirring in Iraq in the wake of the historic meeting last weekend in Cairo, sponsored by the League of Arab States, in which virtually all of Iraq'ss political factions sat down to talk at a reconciliation conference. Three important things took place at that meeting. First, primarily at the insistence of the Sunni delegates, all participants called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, putting virtually the entire Iraqi establishment behind a call for the United States to leave Iraq; second, all participants declared in the official statement that "resistance is a legitimate right of all peoples", thus conferring near-recognition to the armed Iraqi opposition inside Iraq; and third, the meeting set a date in February to convene a second, much larger, conference that could help settle the war in Iraq diplomatically.

That is, if the Bush administration steps up to the opportunity created by the Cairo initiative. That initiative, incidentally, was supported not only by the Arab League but by Iran, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. Read more

See: Reconciliation Conference Ends With Pledge To Move Forward