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NICOSIA - The region between Bosnia and the Indian subcontinent is in a state of flux, with US geo-strategic manoeuvres linked to the war against terrorism forcing smaller powers to move fast to ensure they are on the winning side when a new order emerges. This region, labelled as the Devil's Triangle by one Turkish intellectual, is the area where the major engagements in the American campaign against Al Qaida networks will take place. Extensions to this war theater go as far as Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. The impact of such engagements - be they military, diplomatic or financial - will be felt by all the countries in the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia, among the regional powers likely to be affected the most by the expected changes, are watching and waiting to decide on their course of action in the coming years.

APS sources in the region say that both countries will face tough choices. Although Iran has emerged as a winner from the first phase of the war against terror - i.e. the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaida in Afghanistan - things may move against it in the second phase. Although Iran is poised to reap more strategic advantages if the US follows up its campaign against the Taliban with one against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (see News Service No. 4), suspicions between the US and Iran have heightened since the interim government was set up in Kabul.

Some leaders in Tehran suspect that the US is trying to build up a permanent base in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in order to encircle Iran, in an extension of the "dual containment" approach against both Iran and Iraq. American bases in these two countries would effectively block Iran's eastern frontier, while on the western side are Iraq and Turkey. US accusations that Iran is harbouring Al Qaida militants, a charge ridiculed in Tehran in view of the hostility towards Shiites shown by both Osama Bin Ladin's group and the Taliban, is seen as a deliberate ploy by the Americans to "keep Iran in a box".

Internal politics in Tehran are also a factor, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei opposed to having a rapprochement with the US while the liberal President Mohammed Khatami remains in office. It is in this context that the person who has become a "kingmaker" in Iran, the head of the Expediency Council Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has recently blasted the US in a speech at Friday prayers in Tehran. Pro-Khatami reformists, for their part, have been countering Rafsanjani through the newspaper 'Nouruz' daily newspaper, run by prominent reformist MP Mohsen Mirdamadi who chairs Parliament's influential National Security and Foreign Relations Committee. The paper has in recent weeks accused Rafsanjani of undermining Iran's interests and upsetting government policy. Similarly, while Riyadh has tried to keep as low a profile as possible during the US Operation Enduring Freedom, it has faced strong media criticism in the US. More recently, US officials have been saying that Saudi Arabia wants American troops out of the kingdom. Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was quoted in the 'International Herald Tribune' of Jan. 19 as saying: "I don't think they (the Saudis) want us to stay" and recommending "a place more hospitable".

Since the IHT report, which appeared earlier in the 'Washington Post', Saudi Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Saleh Bin Ali Al Muhaya has said Riyadh does not want US forces to leave the country. He noted that there are about 5,000 US troops, as well as British and French forces, in the kingdom who are concerned with maintaining the southern no-fly zone in Iraq.

However, the 'IHT' report concentrated more about the infrastructural issues, such as the huge Prince Sultan Air Base and other facilities which the US used in its campaign against the Taliban and may need to use in a strike against Iraq (see News Service No. 3).

Complicating the matter for both Iran and Saudi Arabia is the aggressive projection into the Devil's Triangle of influence from the secular regime of Turkey. Both countries are worried about the negative implications, from their perspectives, of the Turkish role in the eastern and central parts of this triangle. On the eastern part of this triangle, Tehran and Riyadh are watching with concern the Turkish role in (a) leading the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan after taking over from Britain within the next three months; (b) training part of the future Afghan diplomatic corps and army; and (c) spreading in Pakistan the ideology of Kemalism - i.e. of the secular founding father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk).

From the US perspective, Turkey is the ideal candidate as a secular Muslim nation to help in the rebuilding of the Afghan political and defence structures. US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, a man much less popular in the Middle East than he is in the US, has praised Turkey as a model for Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries. But both Tehran and Riyadh view Turkey through the prism of its strategic alliance with Israel, reached in February 1994. The Turkish presence in Afghanistan would be seen as opening the backdoor for Israeli influence in that country. This would effectively drive another wedge within the Islamic World, at a time when Arab weakness is already exposed through the Arab-Israeli conflict.

More divisive could be a potential Turkish role in the central part of the triangle, i.e. in the event of a US assault on Iraq in another phase of the war against terror. During his visit to Washington on Jan. 14-15, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit reportedly gaveTurkish support to any US moves against Iraq, provided the US compensated Turkey adequately. Apart from economic aid for the Turkish economy, Ankara will expect a free hand in northern Iraq to ensure that no Kurdish state is created in the region which would threaten to revive separatist sentiments in south-eastern Anatolia. If a US assault removes Saddam's regime, then northern Iraq could well turn into a Turkish "protectorate".

Yet, the sources point out, neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran are in a position to do much about these developments in the Devil's Triangle, because they are caught in the dynamic of the war against terrorism, which has developed a momentum of its own.

The US is acting with a unilateralism that has been unparalleled in recent history, with an intrusive approach that does not tolerate anyone who does not give the help that Washington demands. Thus Al Qaida suspects are extradited or "rendered" from Bosnia to the Philippines, and those captured in Afghanistan are being interned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Complaints about the conditions of their detention, be it from Britain or Germany, are being brushed aside.

The sources believe that the leaderships of Iran and Saudi Arabia are astute enough to realise that, in such an environment, waiting and watching for the dust to settle may be the best option.