Iran offered a plan Tuesday to avert war in Iraq by holding elections supervised by the United Nations - one of several proposals emerging as Muslim leaders prepared for a summit focused on the U.S.-led effort to oust Saddam Hussein.
Arab and Muslim leaders gathered in Qatar for a meeting of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, the third high-level meeting in a week seeking to avert war. Calls for the Iraqi president to consider a life in exile have grown as the leaders of the Persian Gulf region wage a determined diplomatic effort to resolve the crisis.

Iran, which announced it was sending a deputy foreign minister to the meeting, called for the United Nations to conduct free elections in Iraq and urged the Iraqi opposition to reconcile with Saddam as part of a plan aimed at averting war.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi announced the plan in Tehran but it was not clear if Iran would present the ideas to the summit.

"We want a referendum to be held in Iraq and the Iraqi opposition (to) reconcile with the current regime in that country under the supervision of the United Nations," Kharrazi said.

He added, however, that Iran had no intention of interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs.

UAE Leaders Want Conference to Discuss Saddam's Exile

Organizers of the Qatar summit said the Iraq-U.S. crisis would top the agenda of the meeting, which opens Wednesday.

But they said it's up to the leaders to decide if they will discuss an initiative by the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, urging Saddam to step down to avoid a U.S.-led attack.

Kuwait's minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammed Al Sabah, said the initiative, which calls for international supervision of a post-Saddam Iraq, is "not only of historical importance but is timely and the only peaceful exit for this dangerous crisis."

UAE leaders said they want the conference to discuss the initiative, which was shunned by an Arab summit in Egypt last week.

Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, said, "the whole world is opposing the war, as we see from the demonstrations, from the statements, from all the groups."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher praised Sheik Zayed's initiative as "well intentioned," but he declined to say whether it would be discussed formally at the summit.

Morocco's foreign minister, Mohammed Benaissa, said Tuesday that the crisis between Baghdad and Washington should be resolved peacefully.

Sheik Zayed became the first Arab leader to publicly raise the idea of the Iraqi leadership relinquishing power to avoid war over suspicions that it possesses weapons of mass destruction in defiance of a U.N. regulations approved after Baghdad's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

Preliminary Backing to Exile Initiative

On Monday, a meeting in Doha of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council gave its preliminary backing to this initiative,
suggesting it should be discussed further in the Arab League.

"The GCC states strongly support the initiative of Sheik Zayed," Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani told reporters after a GCC foreign ministers' meeting.

In addition to Kuwait, Bahrain - both Gulf states that host thousands of U.S. troops - lent full support to calls for Saddam's ouster.

Iraq's Powerful Neighbours

Among Muslim countries participating in Wednesday's one-day Qatar summit are Iran and Turkey, Iraq's powerful neighbors. Both have expressed concern about turmoil in Iraq if Washington attacks.

Turkish politicians have been haggling over whether Turkey, the only Muslim nation in NATO, should allow U.S. troops to use its territory in an attack.

Last week a summit of 116 developing countries held in Malaysia adopted a declaration urging Iraq to comply fully with U.N. Security Council resolutions mandating its disarmament but expressed its distaste for any U.S.-led war to force compliance.

Oil as a "Weapon" to Avert War

Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a staunch anti-war advocate who arrived here Tuesday, has said Islamic states discussed using oil as a "weapon" to avert a possible U.S.-led war, but had failed to reach a consensus.

In Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, called upon the Muslim leaders to reject the "American aggression."

The IAF also urged Muslim leaders to launch a genuine reform process and "put an end to the single-handed performance of the leaders and the governments which made the nation pay dearly."

Muslim & Arab Twin Strategies on Iraq

Like the two previous summits, Doha's conference is aimed at trying to head off a war with the twin strategies of strongly urging Saddam to comply with U.N. demands while making plain the group's opposition to force.

Iraq is pushing hard for fellow Muslims to support it in its standoff with the United States, arguing that the Americans want to dominate Iraq's oil and divide the Arab and Muslim world.

Most OIC countries have sent low-level delegations to the summit including the Muslim world's most populous country Indonesia. Heavyweight Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are represented by ministers or deputy ministers. Iraq sent Saddam's deputy Izzat Ibrahim.

PHOTO CAPTION

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, front center, speaks with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani as they arrive to participate in the emergency summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to discuss the Iraqi crisis, Tuesday, March 4, 2003, in Doha Qatar. (AP Photo/Wally Sa