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THE BASIC ACCORDS REACHED at the Fez Arab Summit may be more celebrated for what they represent, rather than for what they may achieve. After so long an opposite demonstration, the Arab countries have shown that they can come together in broad agreement over fundamental issues. Had the Arab leaders at Fez failed to do so, the credibility of the Arab case would have been so impaired as to seem almost counterfeit and the notion of a united Arab political position discredited beyond reasonable belief.

Some three months ago, after the recapture of Khorramshahr, Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic Republic looked set for weeks of celebration to be followed by a period of stability and the entrenchment of fundamentalist rule over Iran. On a mixture of fanatical impulse and Khomeini's desire to see his system of rule spreading throughout the region, Iran invaded Iraq on 13 July and the situation has turned around to the point that they are now on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

THE QUICKENING POLITICAL TEMPO in the Middle East, revolving around the crisis centres in the Lebanon and the Iraq-Iran conflict, is making itself felt in all the countries of the area. The plans for the evacuation of the Palestinian forces from Beirut are almost settled; the mediation of Algeria and the Islamic Conference Organisation in the Iraq-Iran war seems to be making some progress; and the Arab states are largely committed to holding an Arab summit conference.

THE TWO WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, In the Gulf and in the Lebanon, are both recognised tragedies not only or the countries immediately involved, but also for the region as a whole. Both have brought about the awful human suffering and wreaked the material and economic havoc that all wars create. But no two wars are quite the same, either in nature and character or in scale and extent, and the Gulf war and the conflict in the Lebanon have in common only the similarity of violence.

THE IRANIAN INVASION of Iraq has instantly re-kindled and intensified the alarm felt in the Gulf Arab" countries about the Iraq-Iran war. Hopes that Iraq's unilateral withdrawal and ceasefire would bring the conflict to an end have been rudely dashed and the Gulf situation has abruptly changed for the worse with the Iranian incursion.

IN OUR PREVIOUS ISSUE (Gulf States N°.190) we analysed the strategic and military implications for Iraq of the effective Iranian victory in the Gulf war. The political and economic consequences are just as substantial. In our second article, we consider the long-term significance in those fields of Iraq's unsuccessful war.

PRESIDENT SADDAM HUSSEIN HAS ANNOUNCED THAT IRAQI FORCES ARE WITHDRAWING from all remaining pockets of Iranian territory in order to deny Iran any excuse for prolonging, the 20-month long Gulf war. The humiliating admission of defeat by Baghdad leaves the combatants back in the positions they held in 1980. What happens next? In this issue, we look at the strategic and military implications of the Iranian victory. In the next issue we will examine the political and economic fall-out.

AN INTENDED DEATH IN LONDON should scarcely be the pretext for a multitude of deaths in the Middle East. In London, the Israeli ambassador gets gunned down outside the Dorchester Hotel, and in the Middle East, hundreds of Arabs perish under a massive Israeli assault by air, sea and land. Twenty schoolchildren died in a bus hit by a bomb. A ruthless reminder of the Old Testament adage an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - only nowadays it seems that the loss of one eye or one tooth justifies the extraction of several hundred eyes and teeth from the innocents.

THERE IS A GROWING EXPECTATION THAT ATTEMPTS WILL BE MADE to hold a meeting of the Arab League in Tunis to discuss the issue of the Iran-Iraq war. Informed sources in Kuwait say that the Gulf Co-operation Council Foreign Ministers' meeting on May 30th will call for an emergency meeting of the Arab League Foreign Ministers early in June.

IRAQ'S ECONOMIC LIFELINE now rests on the single slender thread of the pipeline across Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Doytol, carrying about 650,000 bid of Iraq's oil exports. The Syrian closure of Iraq's trans-Syria pipeline will, according to sources in Baghdad, cut Iraq's foreign exchange earnings by as much as one quarter.

THE FINAL ISRAELI withdrawal from Sinai is the current focus of attention in the Middle East, but that event does not diminish the importance of the situation in the war between Iraq and Iran. For the Arab Gulf states the fact of the war on their doorsteps is an equal, if not greater, concern than the issues at stake hundred of miles to the west.

THERE IS NOW no questioning the realities of the Iranian military gains over Iraq in the Gulf war. President Saddam Hussein's lame explanations of 'rearrangements of defensive positions' and' 'tactical withdrawals' do not conceal the scale and significance of the military debacle suffered by Iraq. The President's comments to a news conference in Baghdad in which he said "We believe that what has been achieved is a victory not only for Iraq, but for humanity, too" is an almost derisory description of the serious military situation facing Iraq.

IRAN CLAIMS TO have taken nearly 500 square miles of Iraqi occupied territory in the offensive they began on 21 March. In the fierce fighting that erupted in Shush and Dezful area in the southern sector of the battlefront both combatants have claimed great successes and each allege that heavy losses have been inflicted on the other side.

CAPTAIN ALI ABDULLAH is a brisk and confident young officer in the Sultanate of Oman's Armed Forces and one of his duties is to deliver a military briefing to invited visitors on the operational role and functions of the Southern Oman Brigade. In the Brigade's headquarters near Sallalah, on Oman's southern coast, Captain Ali stands before a large scale wall map of the Sultanate's western border with the People's Democratic Republic of ,(South) Yemen (PDRY) and points out the main deployment areas of the Southern Oman Brigade - the sharp end of Oman's low key confrontation with the PDRY.

Saudi Arabia has threatened to exert financial pressure on the Iraqi government to find a solution to end the war with Iran, according to a well placed source in Baghdad. The Saudi intention is said to have been made late last year, when funds to Iraq to maintain both its war effort and its huge development programme, were running at an estimated $20bn from Arab Gulf states. The source, involved in both military and civilian projects for the Iraqi government, says that the severity of Iraq's cash flow problem has begun to force major civilian projects to be postponed. It is estimated that 40% of new civilian construction has been postponed, indicating that Iraq is no longer receiving all the financial support it needs.