By: Sana Abdallah – Middle East Times

The return of an Arab League mission chief this week to the organization’s Baghdad office to fill a position that has been vacant since January 2007 is the latest signal that Arab countries are making a belated diplomatic comeback to the war-torn “brotherly” country.

Hani Khallaf, who was appointed head of the 22-nation Arab League’s mission in Iraq, assumed his post on Monday.

The Egyptian diplomat replaces Moroccan Moukhtar Lamani, who resigned 15 months ago on the grounds that he did not get enough Arab support for his mission of pursuing Iraqi reconciliation and restoring order in the country.

The new envoy said he would pursue the Arab organization’s efforts in supporting Iraq and boosting Arab presence in the country so that Iraq can return to its “normal status” within the Arab fold.

WHO HAS THE GENIE? — Arab countries that had opted to steer clear of Iraq to avoid being caught up in a slew of problems that included internal sectarian unrest, the U.S. military occupation and its political agenda, and Iran’s meddling, now find themselves marginalized over a strategic country that sits on one of the world’s largest oil reserves.

The Arab countries appear to realize it is time to play an active role in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, something they have been reluctant to do since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and ensuing violence that swept the country.

The invasion and occupation of an Arab country and subsequent installation of a government dictated to by Washington, has been extremely unpopular on the Arab street.

Until recently any normalization of diplomatic ties with the Iraqi government would be seen as providing a legitimate cover for the U.S.-led occupation and a tacit endorsement that toppling Arab regimes through foreign military forces was acceptable.

A number of assassinations and other attacks has also kept Arabs from the country. In August 2003 the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad was targeted in a bombing that killed 17 people. Two years later the Egyptian charge d’affaires was kidnapped and murdered. And in 2006 a top United Arab Emirates’ diplomat was kidnapped.

Although the Iraqi government has repeatedly called on Arab countries to open their embassies and restore regular diplomatic representation only Lebanon, Yemen and the Palestinians have diplomatic missions in the capital.

But the picture in recent months has begun to change as growing numbers of Arab leaders and top government officials visited Iraq, with some countries appointing new ambassadors or promising full ties.

Last Sunday Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit made a landmark visit, the first by a senior Egyptian official in 18 years, during which he declared it was the “proper time to come to Iraq and launch deeper Iraq-Egypt relations.”

He visited a site for the new Egyptian embassy in Baghdad and expressed hope that Cairo would soon open a mission, without specifying a time. Abul Gheit, like other Arab officials, has previously stated that security guarantees should be in place before venturing into opening embassies.

Egypt has had no official diplomatic representation in Iraq since July 2005, when its charge d’affaires Ihab al-Sharif was kidnapped and killed by al-Qaida.

Egyptian-Iraqi ties hit the rocks in 1977 when Egypt’s late President Anwar Sadat launched peace talks with Israel. They have been unstable most the of the time since. Though relations were resumed in the late 1980s, they were severed again in 1990 when Cairo joined the U.S.-led coalition that forced the Iraqis out of Kuwait.

The Egyptian foreign minister’s visit and the Arab League’s dispatch of its chief of mission to Baghdad have come on the heels of Jordan, Syria, Bahrain and the UAE naming ambassadors and making their own high-profile visits to the Iraqi capital in the past two months, including one by Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

Independent Iraqi commentators say the Arab comeback to the country is belated, but not too late. They say that the absence gave two key enemy players – the United States and Iran – time to assume political and diplomatic roles that should have been reserved for the Arabs.

Some Arab commentators say that while the Arab countries had opted to steer clear of Iraq to avoid being caught up in a slew of problems that included internal sectarian unrest, the U.S. military occupation and its political agenda, and Iran’s strong political clout, they now find themselves marginalized over a strategic country that sits on one of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Analysts also argue that the U.S.-allied Arab regimes that are returning to Iraq are probably doing so under U.S. pressure.

U.S. officials have made no secret of their desire to see Iraq’s Arab neighbors – predominantly Sunni – assume a more active presence in the country, mainly to counterbalance Iran’s influence through the ruling Shiite parties and to provide a more acceptable face for the U.S. military presence.