The tyrants, emirs, and kings of the Arab world are sweating bullets: Arab states fear Iraq polls will fan reform calls, boost Iran. (Hat tip: NC.)

CAIRO (AFP) - Sunni Arab states fear the emergence of a hostile Shiite government in Iraq after the first free elections there in 50 years that also threaten to bring new pressure to bear for political reforms of their own.

“Victory for Sistani,” the Cairo daily Nahdat Misr headlined Monday, referring to the Iran-born Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who engineered a joint list that is widely expected to win power for Iraq’s long oppressed majority community.

Cairo University law professor Mohammed Nur Farhat asked if there had not been “an understanding, even partial, between the United States and Iran,” paving the way for the Shiites’ expected rise to power for the first time in centuries in an Arab state.

Jordan expressed concern that the Shiites might hold a monopoly of power in the new National Assembly after the much lower turnout reported from areas inhabited by the Sunni Arab elite that dominated Saddam Hussein’s regime and all previous Iraqi governments.

King Abdullah II said the Iraqi leadership must strive to bring the country’s Sunni minority into the fold and ensure that the constitution to be drafted by the elected parliament is inclusive.

“The Sunnis, I still believe, do feel marginalised,” said the monarch, who had expressed fears of meddling by Shiite Iran in the election, noting that Sunni participation in the vote had been “a lot lower than any of us hoped”.

The pro-government Amman daily Al-Rai urged Sunnis not to be tempted by anti-US insurgents into jeopardising Iraq’s unity.

“The Iraqis are … requested now to unite and safeguard their Arab identity … and not bet on the will and plans of foreigners, terrorists, extremists,” an editorial said.

Commentators predicted that Washington’s success in organizing the Iraqi elections would encourage neo-conservatives within the US administration in their ambitions to promote political reform across the region.

“While the world faces problems of a global scale, the United States has a single preoccupation — what they call democracy,” complained a commentary in the government-owned Cairo daily Al-Akhbar. “American democracy is a damaged good that the United States is trying to spread across the world in the interests of domination, oppression and obscurantism,” it said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karameh said his country was also being targeted by Washington, which co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution last September demanding an end to foreign involvement in its affairs. “We’re facing a plan to impose its (US) domination by forcing the region to redefine policies under the slogan of democracy and freedom, just as is happening in Iraq and Palestine,” Karameh told reporters in Beirut. “In Lebanon and Syria, we are the victims of the same onslaught. The methods may be different but the aim is the same.”

Syrian counterpart Mohammed Naji Otri echoed his comments, telling the same Beirut press conference: “These pressures are aimed at recolonizing the region.”

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif said earlier this year that “the Egyptian people do not attach priority to political reforms.

And President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday rejected calls for an amendment to the constitution to make the presidency directly elected, in place of the present system under which a plebiscite is held on a single candidate nominated by parliament. ”I am not going to make a change that would go down as a black day in Egyptian history,“ he told reporters Saturday.

But analysts warned that the pressure for reform now risked becoming unstoppable, however much authoritarian governments around the region tried to resist it.

”Democracy is an idea that is now on the march in the Middle East even if the efforts to contain it are immense,” said Amr al-Shubaqi of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political Studies in Cairo.