Ed Note: FIRST suicide bomber???

Guard's son to return Irgun fighter's Bible
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, NY
April 19, 2007

A Bible inscribed by an Irgun fighter and given to his British guard moments before he blew himself up in prison will be returned to the fighter's family.

In 1947, Meir Feinstein, 19, and Moshe Barazani, 21, had been sentenced to death by British Mandate authorities -- Feinstein for his role in bombing the Jerusalem train station, Barazani for weapons possession and the attempted assassination of a British commander. Rather than be hanged by authorities Feinstein, of the Irgun, and Barazani, of Lehi, decided to kill themselves.

Feinstein inscribed the Bible he kept in his cell in Hebrew and English.

"In the shadow of the gallows, 21.4.47. To the British soldier as you stand guard. Before we go to the gallows, accept this Bible as a memento and remember that we stood in dignity and marched in dignity. It is better to die with a weapon in hand than to live with hands raised," he wrote in the Hebrew version.

The two gave the Bible to Sgt. Thomas Henry Goodwin, then saved his life by asking him to leave the cell while they prayed, at which point they detonated bombs hidden in two oranges.

Goodwin left a request in his will that the Bible be returned, and his son will give the volume to Feinstein's nephew Eliezer at a ceremony at the Museum of the Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem. The Bible, which contains some 115 woodcut illustrations by Gustave Dore, will be kept at the museum.

A New Threat In Iraq

By David Ignatius
Washington Post
April 18, 2007

While the Bush administration struggles to stabilize Baghdad, a major new threat is emerging in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. If it isn't defused, this crisis could further erode U.S. goals in Iraq -- drawing foreign military intervention, splintering the country further and undermining U.S. hopes for long-term military bases in Kurdistan.

The core issue is Kurdish nationalism, which worries Iraq's powerful northern neighbor, Turkey, which has a substantial Kurdish minority. The Bush administration has tried to finesse the problem, hoping to keep two friends happy: The Kurds have been America's most reliable partner in Iraq, while the Turks are a crucial ally in the region. But in recent weeks, this strategy has been breaking down.

As with so many aspects of Iraq, the Bush administration has wandered into a conflict that is encrusted with centuries of ethnic hatred. Iraqi Kurds push their politicians toward defiant assertions of independence; Turks are demanding that their leaders move to crush the Kurdish upstarts. Meanwhile, the American public is increasingly fed up with the fractious mess of Iraq and wants U.S. troops home yesterday.

The administration, realizing that it was drifting toward a confrontation over the Kurdish issue, last year appointed retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston as a special emissary. His mission is to urge the Iraqis to crack down on the militant Kurdish political party known as the PKK, which uses Iraqi Kurdistan as a staging point. The Turks denounce the PKK as a terrorist group and threaten that if the United States doesn't take decisive action to suppress it, the Turkish army will.

Ralston is said to have warned top administration officials in December that the Turks might invade by the end of April unless the United States contained the PKK. Other knowledgeable officials are similarly worried, and one analyst has predicted that the Turks may seize a border strip about eight miles deep into Iraq. Ralston has tried his best to defuse the crisis, clearing a Kurdish refugee camp of suspected PKK members and talking regularly with both sides. But the time bomb continues to tick.

A flash point is Kirkuk, an oil-rich city claimed by the Kurds, which the Turks regard as a special protectorate because of its large Turkmen population. The new Iraqi constitution calls for a referendum by December on the city's future, and the Kurds are confident they will win the vote. The Turks, fearing the same outcome, want the referendum delayed. The Bush administration seems to favor a delay but hasn't said so publicly, to avoid angering the Kurds and undermining the constitution.

Turks and Kurds have fired heavy rhetorical barrages the past few weeks. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani warned that if the Turks meddled in Kirkuk, "then we will take action for the 30 million Kurds in Turkey." The head of the Turkish general staff, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, responded that "from an exclusively military point of view," he favored an invasion of Iraq to clean out PKK havens. If the Turks do attack, counters one Kurdish official, "their own border will not be respected. They will not be the only ones to choose the battlefield."

A wild card in the Kurdish problem is Iran. Like the Turks, the Iranians have a restless Kurdish minority and would be tempted to intervene militarily against a militant group called PJAK that operates from Iraqi Kurdistan. Indeed, top Iranian military officers met in Ankara recently for discussions with the Turkish general staff about possible military contingencies in Iraq, according to one U.S. official.

Kurdish sources report that the Iranians have recently shelled Kurdish targets inside Iraq and that Iranian-backed Islamic groups have attacked border posts in northern Iraq. The Iranians want to destabilize Kurdistan, partly to damage America's wider policy aims in Iraq, Kurdish officials argue.

Adding to this toxic brew is growing tension between the United States and Kurdish leaders. The Kurds were furious when they weren't given prior notice about a U.S. Special Forces raid in January that attempted to snatch two top Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers at the Irbil airport in Kurdistan. Unwitting Kurdish pesh merga troops at the airport nearly opened fire on the Americans. Although the airport raid was a failure, U.S. forces did manage to grab five Revolutionary Guard members at an Iranian consular office, which embarrassed the Kurdish leadership. The Kurds feel their friendship for America has been taken for granted.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been a success story, one of the very few since the U.S. invasion four years ago. But its status as a haven and future American base against Iran and al-Qaeda is in jeopardy. Of bad news in Iraq, it seems, there is no end.

U.S. Holds 18,000 Detainees In Iraq

Recent Security Crackdown in Baghdad Nets Another 1,000
By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer
Washington Post
April 15, 2007

In the past month, as a new security crackdown in Baghdad began, U.S. forces arrested another 1,000 Iraqis, bringing to 18,000 the number of detainees jailed in two U.S.-run facilities in that country.

The average stay in these detention centers is about a year, but about 8,000 of the detainees have been jailed longer, including 1,300 who have been in custody for two years, said a statement provided by Capt. Phillip J. Valenti, spokesman for Task Force 134, the U.S. Military Police group handling detainee operations.

"The intent is to detain individuals determined to be true threats to coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces and stability in Iraq," Valenti said. "Unlike situations in the past, these detainees are not conventional prisoners of war."

Instead, he said, they are "diverse civilian internees from widely divergent political, religious and ethnic backgrounds who are detained on the basis of intelligence available at the time of capture and gathered during subsequent questioning." Valenti said 250 of those in custody are third-country nationals, including some high-value detainees.

Last month, military spokesmen in Iraq told The Washington Post that the United States held 17,000 detainees -- 13,800 in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and 3,300 at Camp Cropper, outside Baghdad. One year ago, less than 10,000 Iraqis were in U.S. facilities in Iraq, but that figure has grown and could reach 20,000 by the end of this year, according to military contracting documents. As of last month, the Iraqi detention system contained about 34,000 detainees.

The initial decision to detain or release those arrested is made by a U.S. unit commander with the assistance of an Army lawyer, Valenti said. A file is made for each detainee that includes intelligence reports and any sworn statements and other evidence that supports the determination that the person is a threat.

At the U.S. detention facility, each case is reviewed by a Magistrate Cell. The decision of the Magistrate Cell is given to each prisoner in writing. Each case is reviewed after 18 months by the Joint Detention Review Committee, an Iraqi-U.S. panel. "Approval for continued detention beyond the initial 18-month timeframe requires joint approval from the MNF-1 commander [Multinational Force commander Gen. David H. Petraeus] and the prime minister of Iraq," Valenti said.

Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor who helped draft the Iraqi constitution, asked, "Pursuant to what law are we holding people who are not turned over to Iraqi courts?" Because they are not considered prisoners of war, he said, the United States must consider them in the "enemy combatant" category used to justify holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Feldman also expressed concern about whether family members are informed about the detainees' identities and where they are held. If there is no notification, "disappearing people is a bad, bad practice," Feldman said.

On Feb. 13, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a martial-law decree supporting the Baghdad security crackdown. The decree gave military commanders authority to conduct warrantless searches and arrests, monitor private communications and restrict public gatherings.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said that under Maliki's declared martial law, it is up to the Iraqi government to deal with the detainees. "We don't see any legal authority for the U.S. to detain Iraqis or judge them under some tribunal system," she said. "If the U.S. exercises that power it's another symbol of occupation and not an obligation many in the military want to assume."

One nongovernmental organization expert who has studied the U.S. detentions in Iraq said, "There are a lot of differing opinions within Washington and Baghdad over how to handle these detainees, and the unspoken question is: What will happen if they are turned over to the Iraqis?" The expert spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear that a public statement could undermine the group's activities in Iraq.

Of the about 2,000 Iraqi detainees once held by the United States and turned over to the Iraqi Central Criminal Court, 1,747 have been convicted, Valenti said, with 80 percent of them receiving sentences of five years or greater, including the death penalty. Noting that U.S. forces have uncovered mistreatment of prisoners in Iraqi jails, the expert warned that "turning our detainees over to the Iraqis might lead to their torture and even death, so they are better off with us for the time being."

Militia Talks Could Reshape Darfur Conflict

By LYDIA POLGREEN
The New York Times
April 15, 2007

ABÉCHÉ, Chad — The two rebels sitting together on a dry riverbed could just as easily have been sworn enemies, perched on opposite sides of an abyss that has cleaved their homeland in two.

But their talks on a military alliance of Arab and non-Arab tribes in Darfur could radically reshape the conflict, giving new life to rebel groups that have fought Khartoum for more than four years and undermining the government’s use of Arab militias to quell the rebellion.

Adam Shogar, a commander of the Sudan Liberation Army, the non-Arab rebels at the center of the Darfur conflict, stretched a coal-black arm at Yassine Yousef Abdul Rahman, his copper-skinned, brown-eyed counterpart from an Arab insurgent group, studying him carefully with midnight eyes.

“We are brothers for Darfur,” Mr. Shogar said. “We are in the same struggle for our rights.”

The meeting of the two men took place here in eastern Chad recently, where representatives of the main rebel groups fighting the government and its allied tribal militias in Darfur have gathered to try to join forces, either to negotiate a settlement to the crisis in Darfur or to mount a decisive offensive against the government.

“The government fear is if the Darfur Arabs unify and move against them, that is a decisive switch in the balance of power,” said Alex de Waal, a Sudan scholar at Justice Africa, a research institution in London, who has studied Darfur for decades. “Should they shift against the government, then the government is in deep trouble.”

The struggle in Darfur has often been portrayed as one between Arabs and black Africans, nomads and farmers, with the former bent on slaughtering the latter. But the conflict has never been that simple.

In many ways, Darfur’s Arab tribes have the same grievances as the African farmers and the same suspicion that Sudan’s central government in Khartoum views them as marginal and expendable. And they fear that the government is trying to scapegoat them as the sole authors of the killing in Darfur as the International Criminal Court begins indicting suspects for war crimes.

Here in eastern Chad, where the intertribal violence gripping Darfur has spilled over, Arab tribes have found themselves victims of non-Arab militias armed by Chad’s government, according to tribal leaders.

The complex and shifting role of Arab tribes in both Sudan and Chad underscores how difficult it will be to secure a political solution to the four-year-old crisis that has sent 2.3 million people fleeing their homes, killed at least 200,000 — some say as many as 400,000 — and set off a broad conflict in one of the most unstable parts of the world.

The main perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities have been government-sponsored Arab militias that have come to be known by a local epithet for bandits, janjaweed.

The Sudanese government turned to these militias as a kind of counterinsurgency force because its own military, weakened by a long civil war in the south and made up largely of non-Arab recruits, could not be relied on to crush the rebellion among non-Arab tribes in Darfur.

While some Arab tribal leaders, notably Musa Hilal and Ali Kushayb, heeded this call, most did not, and instead remained on the sidelines, Mr. de Waal and other Sudan experts said. Arab leaders in Darfur say that fewer than a quarter of its tribesmen took up arms against their non-Arab neighbors.

Furthermore, the relationship between the central government, dominated by three small Arab tribes living along the Nile, and Darfur’s Arabs, who claim a heritage going back to the Prophet Muhammad, is often antagonistic. Darfur’s Arabs have long been the stalwarts of the main opposition Umma Party, perhaps the largest and most popular political party in northern Sudan.

A boom-and-bust cycle of livestock herding has often left Darfur’s Arabs destitute, especially during the great droughts of the 1970s and ’80s. An ancient land tenure system controlled by the farm-based non-Arab tribes has led to conflicts between nomads and settled tribes for centuries, but traditionally these disputes have been resolved through mediation.

That system broke down in the 1980s and ’90s, as the government sought to exercise greater control over Darfur. Political and traditional leaders at the state and tribal level were replaced by Arab candidates closer to the government.

But Arabs in the region have also suffered in the Darfur conflict. Some of their traditional migration routes, which they have traversed for hundreds of years, have been cut off by the fighting, forcing some nomads to become sedentary.

“The suffering of Arab nomads in this conflict has been completely ignored,” said Mohammed El Sayed Hassan, director of Al Massar, a charity that helps nomads in North Darfur. “For centuries we have had friendship and exchange with the Fur people and other African tribes. Now we are seen as killers.”

Indeed, nomads and farmers have depended on each other for centuries to survive on some of the world’s most forbidding terrain. Farmers allowed herders to traverse their lands, and the herders brought milk and meat. They also transported farm goods to markets, and traded durable goods not usually available in remote farming villages. The farmers bartered those items for vegetables and grain.

“The economic relationships between the Arabs and their non-Arab neighbors have been very close,” Mr. de Waal said. “Given enough time they are likely to make common cause against the government.”

The government has faced this sort of challenge before: a militia it armed to fight the rebels in the civil war in the south eventually joined the rebels, forcing the government to accept a cease-fire. Militias from South Darfur that fought in the southern civil war were also blamed by the government for the slaving raids that were the signature atrocity of that conflict. Those militias were so angry at the betrayal that they refused to fight for the government in Darfur, Mr. de Waal said.

The rapprochement between the Arab and non-Arab militias in Darfur is part of a longstanding pattern of occasional alliances of convenience between the Arab rulers in Khartoum and the Arab tribes of Darfur giving way to the reality that the various tribes of Darfur need one other more than they need the government.

But even as the relationship between tribes begins to shift, slowly, back toward its traditional balance in Darfur, Chad is descending deeper into interethnic conflict.

Arab tribes here say they have suffered reprisal attacks by non-Arab militias. Around Goz Beida, a town south east of Abéché and a good 60 miles from the Sudanese border, interethnic violence has driven out tens of thousands of people, most of them black Africans living in squalid, makeshift camps.

The Chadian government has blamed Sudan for this violence, but local officials say that while Sudanese Arab militias have been deeply implicated in cross-border raids closer to the porous frontier, much of the violence is between Arab and non-Arab Chadians.

Said Brahim, who until recently was the sultan of Dar Silla, a region of eastern Chad that is home to a combustible mix of tribes, said that intertribal violence is exacting a terrible toll. He is a member of the non-Arab Dadjo tribe, but at a recent meeting with United Nations officials he brought a prominent Arab sheik, El Mahdi al-Samani of the Heimat tribe.

A tall, courtly man dressed in a flowing yellow robe and matching embroidered skullcap, Mr. Brahim spoke in impeccable French, bemoaning the divisions that were tearing his community apart.

“Are politics going to destroy centuries of friendship?” he asked. “The picture is so bleak that I cannot even tell you how bad things are getting.”

The two wizened men described the violence that has enveloped their communities. In all, 140,000 Chadians have been displaced in interethnic fighting in the past year, the vast majority from Dadjo and other non-Arab tribes. Mr. Samani said 10 villages of Arab families have been displaced in the latest fighting, fleeing toward Darfur against the advance of Dadjo militias.

Mr. Brahim said that he surrendered his position of sultan to his son under pressure from the Chadian government because he opposed the government policy of arming Dadjo militias to fight Arab militias from Sudan and Chad. Senior Western diplomats confirmed that this arming was taking place.

Like Sudan’s army, Chad’s military is stretched thin by its efforts to fight several rebel groups based in Sudan that are trying to overthrow President Idriss Déby of Chad. Arming local militias is seen as an expedient way of dealing with border security problems, but the experiences of Darfur and the civil war in southern Sudan have shown that once militias are unleashed, they are nearly impossible to control, experts say.

Beyond that, Chad, like Sudan, has now rejected a United Nations peacekeeping force on its soil, saying it will accept only police officers, not troops.

In Darfur, the loyalty and obedience of janjaweed militias are highly suspect. Mr. Rahman and his fellow fighters said that many Arabs felt betrayed by the government and would not stand down even if Khartoum ordered them to do so.

Avoiding all-out war by negotiating a new political settlement has been the main diplomatic objective over the past few months. John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, who just completed a tour of the Darfur region, said that one of the most important messages he plans to bring to the Security Council is the complexity of the conflict here.

“It is not simply Arab versus African, nomad versus farmer,” Mr. Holmes said. “It is a political problem, and it needs a political solution.”

Eye on Iran, Rivals Pursuing Nuclear Power

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
April 15, 2007

Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.

So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.

“The rules have changed,” King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everybody’s going for nuclear programs.”

The Middle East states say they only want atomic power. Some probably do. But United States government and private analysts say they believe that the rush of activity is also intended to counter the threat of a nuclear Iran.

By nature, the underlying technologies of nuclear power can make electricity or, with more effort, warheads, as nations have demonstrated over the decades by turning ostensibly civilian programs into sources of bomb fuel. Iran’s uneasy neighbors, analysts say, may be positioning themselves to do the same.

“One danger of Iran going nuclear has always been that it might provoke others,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London. “So when you see the development of nuclear power elsewhere in the region, it’s a cause for some concern.”

Some analysts ask why Arab states in the Persian Gulf, which hold nearly half the world’s oil reserves, would want to shoulder the high costs and obligations of a temperamental form of energy. They reply that they must invest in the future, for the day when the flow of oil dries up.

But with Shiite Iran increasingly ascendant in the region, Sunni countries have alluded to other motives. Officials from 21 governments in and around the Middle East warned at a meeting of Arab leaders in March that Iran’s drive for atomic technology could result in the beginning of “a grave and destructive nuclear arms race in the region.”

In Washington, officials are seizing on such developments to build their case for stepping up pressure on Iran. President Bush has talked privately to experts on the Middle East about his fears of a “Sunni bomb,” and his concerns that countries in the Middle East may turn to the only nuclear-armed Sunni state, Pakistan, for help.

Even so, that concern is tempered by caution. In an interview on Thursday, a senior administration official said that the recent announcements were “clearly part of an effort to send a signal to Iran that two can play this game.” And, he added, “among the non-Iranian programs I’ve heard about in the region, I have not heard talk of reprocessing or enrichment, which is what would worry us the most.”

The Middle East has seen hints of a regional nuclear-arms race before. After Israel obtained its first weapon four decades ago, several countries took steps down the nuclear road. But many analysts say it is Iran’s atomic intransigence that has now prodded the Sunni powers into getting serious about hedging their bets and, like Iran, financing them with $65-a-barrel oil.

“Now’s the time to worry,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert at the Nixon Center, a Washington policy institute. “The Iranians have to worry, too. The idea that they’ll emerge as the regional hegemon is silly. There will be a very serious counterreaction, certainly in conventional military buildups but also in examining the nuclear option.”

No Arab country now has a power reactor, whose spent fuel can be mined for plutonium, one of the two favored materials — along with uranium — for making the cores of atom bombs. Some Arab states do, however, engage in civilian atomic research.

Analysts caution that a chain reaction of nuclear emulation is not foreordained. States in the Middle East appear to be waiting to see which way Tehran’s nuclear standoff with the United Nations Security Council goes before committing themselves wholeheartedly to costly programs of atomic development.

Even if Middle Eastern nations do obtain nuclear power, political alliances and arms-control agreements could still make individual states hesitate before crossing the line to obtain warheads. Many may eventually decide that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits — as South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Libya did after investing heavily in arms programs.

But many diplomats and analysts say that the Sunni Arab governments are so anxious about Iran’s nuclear progress that they would even, grudgingly, support a United States military strike against Iran.

“If push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a U.S. military strike, then the Arab gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the U.S.,” said Christian Koch, director of international studies at the Gulf Research Center, a private group in Dubai.

Decades ago, it was Israel’s drive for nuclear arms that brought about the region’s first atomic jitters. Even some Israeli leaders found themselves “preaching caution because of the reaction,” said Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland and the author of “Israel and the Bomb.”

Egypt responded first. In 1960, after the disclosure of Israel’s work on a nuclear reactor, Cairo threatened to acquire atomic arms and sought its own reactor. Years of technical and political hurdles ultimately ended that plan.

Iraq came next. But in June 1981, Israeli fighter jets bombed its reactor just days before engineers planned to install the radioactive core. The bombing ignited a global debate over how close Iraq had come to nuclear arms. It also prompted Iran, then fighting a war with Iraq, to embark on a covert response.

Alireza Assar, a nuclear adviser to Iran’s Ministry of Defense who later defected, said he attended a secret meeting in 1987 at which the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Iran had to do whatever was necessary to achieve victory. “We need to have all the technical requirements in our possession,” Dr. Assar recalled the commander as saying, even the means to “build a nuclear bomb.”

In all, Iran toiled in secret for 18 years before its nuclear efforts were disclosed in 2003. Intelligence agencies and nuclear experts now estimate that the Iranians are 2 to 10 years away from having the means to make a uranium-based bomb. It says its uranium enrichment work is entirely peaceful and meant only to fuel reactors.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s concerns grew when inspectors found evidence of still-unexplained ties between Iran’s ostensibly peaceful program and its military, including work on high explosives, missiles and warheads. That combination, the inspectors said in early 2006, suggested a “military nuclear dimension.”

Before such disclosures, few if any states in the Middle East attended the atomic agency’s meetings on nuclear power development. Now, roughly a dozen are doing so and drawing up atomic plans.

The newly interested states include Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and the seven sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates — Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Al Fujayrah, Ras al Khaymah, Sharjah, and Umm al Qaywayn.

“They generally ask what they need to do for the introduction of power,” said R. Ian Facer, a nuclear power engineer who works for the I.A.E.A. at its headquarters in Vienna. The agency teaches the basics of nuclear energy. In exchange, states must undergo periodic inspections to make sure their civilian programs have no military spinoffs.

Saudi Arabia, since reversing itself on reactors, has become a whirlwind of atomic interest. It recently invited President Vladimir V. Putin to become the first Russian head of state to visit the desert kingdom. He did so in February, offering a range of nuclear aid.

Diplomats and analysts say Saudi Arabia leads the drive for nuclear power within the Gulf Cooperation Council, based in Riyadh. In addition to the Saudis, the council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — Washington’s closest Arab allies. Its member states hug the western shores of the Persian Gulf and control about 45 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

Late last year, the council announced that it would embark on a nuclear energy program. Its officials have said they want to get it under way by 2009.

“We will develop it openly,” Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said of the council’s effort. “We want no bombs. All we want is a whole Middle East that is free from weapons of mass destruction,” an Arab reference to both Israel’s and Iran’s nuclear programs.

In February, the council and the I.A.E.A. struck a deal to work together on a nuclear power plan for the Arab gulf states. Abdul Rahman ibn Hamad al-Attiya, the council’s secretary general, told reporters in March that the agency would provide technical expertise and that the council would hire a consulting firm to speed its nuclear deliberations.

Already, Saudi officials are traveling regularly to Vienna, and I.A.E.A. officials to Riyadh, the Saudi capital. “It’s a natural right,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the atomic agency’s director general, said recently of the council’s energy plan, estimating that carrying it out might take up to 15 years.

Every gulf state except Iraq has declared an interest in nuclear power. By comparison, 15 percent of South American nations and 20 percent of African ones have done so.

One factor in that exceptional level of interest is that the Persian Gulf states have the means. Typically, a large commercial reactor costs up to $4 billion. The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council are estimated to be investing in nonnuclear projects valued at more than $1 trillion.

Another factor is Iran. Its shores at some points are visible across the waters of the gulf — called the Arabian Gulf by Arabs and the Persian Gulf by Iranians.

The council wants “its own regional initiative to counter the possible threat from an aggressive neighbor armed with nuclear weapons,” said Nicole Stracke, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center. Its members, she added, “felt they could no longer lag behind Iran.”

A similar technology push is under way in Turkey, where long-simmering plans for nuclear power have caught fire. Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for three plants. “We want to benefit from nuclear energy as soon as possible,” he said. Turkey plans to put its first reactor near the Black Sea port of Sinop, and to start construction this year.

Egypt, too, is moving forward. Last year, it announced plans for a reactor at El-Dabaa, about 60 miles west of Alexandria. “We do not start from a vacuum,” President Hosni Mubarak told the governing National Democracy Party’s annual conference. His remark was understated given Cairo’s decades of atomic research.

Robert Joseph, a former under secretary of state for arms control and international security who is now Mr. Bush’s envoy on nuclear nonproliferation, visited Egypt earlier this year. According to officials briefed on the conversations, officials from the Ministry of Electricity indicated that if Egypt was confident that it could have a reliable supply of reactor fuel, it would have little desire to invest in the costly process of manufacturing its own nuclear fuel — the enterprise that experts fear could let Iran build a bomb.

Other officials, especially those responsible for Egypt’s security, focused more on the possibility of further proliferation in the region if Iran succeeded in its effort to achieve a nuclear weapons capability.

“I don’t know how much of it is real,” Mr. Joseph said of a potential arms race. “But it is becoming urgent for us to shape the future expansion of nuclear energy in a way that reduces the risks of proliferation, while meeting our energy and environmental goals.”