Asked in his weekly seminar about the new American formulation of the region on the eve of the expected change in Iraq , the Religious Authority Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah said:

 It was quite striking that the American Administration should talk about a new initiative towards the Middle East that aims at “helping the forces of change and reform”, and promising to provide about 29 million Dollars, to solve the problems of the region, especially unemployment, child illiteracy, marginality of regional markets and lack of women’s participation… For America that plunders the wealth of the region in a gradual and carefully studied way is offering its peoples certain empty promises filled with contempt and mockery that would make even the naïve loose their temper.

The successive American Administrations’ policy has always been to impoverish the Arab and Islamic region, plunder its wealth, forcing its governments to buy American weapons which were destined to become mere junk after a short period with incredibly high prices, and forcing these governments to pay the expenses of its wars in the region…

One of the Ambassadors of the major Arab countries told me: “ America has impoverished us”. We also know that America sponsors ignorance and illiteracy in the region since it protects the regimes that spread ignorance just as it is the sponsor of the impoverishment polices… How then could it talk about a change of the state it has politically and militarily sponsored and protected?

We are afraid that this new formulation of the region aims at forcing it to accommodate to the new American policies of hegemony. In this respect, the Arab and Islamic world is expected to be void of any military or political power; the struggle with Israel should be ended with Israel keeping its superiority over all the Arabs, and Muslims, and a solution should be found to the Palestinian cause that takes into account all of Sharon’s conditions.

I believe that this new initiative makes use of all that the American installed dictators, especially the Iraqi regime, have done to force the Arabs and Muslims to declare total surrender and their subjugation to America and Israel, after dominating or taming those in Palestine and around it who are still alive enough to resist.

We warn that what the American Administration is planning for is by far more dangerous than what is going on now. It is not less than a comprehensive change of our Islamic and Arab world in the way that best serves the American interests. That is why we have to end this state of indifference we are currently living it, because the danger does not threaten the current state of the nation, but its very existence too.