Kuwait Prince Bows to Moves for Reforms

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia —  Kuwait’s exiled crown prince and prime minister, Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah, pledged Saturday to restore Kuwait’s 1962 constitution, a dramatic concession to demands for political reform that will open the way to restoration of Parliament and free elections in a liberated Kuwait.

To thunderous applause from more than 1,000 intellectuals, political leaders and opposition figures gathered here, the crown prince also promised an expanded role for women and said that democratic reforms constitute the monarchy’s “reward” for the continued loyalty of the Kuwaiti people in the wake of the Aug. 2 invasion by Iraq.

“Good deeds only deserve good deeds in return,” he declared. “The objectives for which we are working are lofty and momentous, and after the achievement of the victory and the withdrawal of the aggressors, Kuwait will once again welcome the Kuwaiti people. It shall rise in the shadow of the constitution of 1962, consolidating democracy and deepening public participation, which has always been an objective for which we are working.”

Tears ran down the faces of elderly Kuwaitis as the exiled emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, and then the crown prince, spoke. Their talks were followed by the strains of the Kuwaiti national anthem and chants of “Long live Kuwait! Long live the emir! Long live the free peoples of the world!”

Opposition leaders, who had threatened to breach the Kuwaiti alliance and withdraw their support from the emir unless their demands were met, instead pledged their loyalty to the ruling Sabah family and said they believe the ruling family will be forced to live up to its new commitments.

“It’s a very historical day. . . . Kuwait will never be the same,” said Salem K. Marzouk, a businessman and opposition leader who admitted that he had been skeptical that the Sabah family would concede to reforms. “We expect now to have a Western type of democracy, period. Each man, each woman will vote. People as young as possible, 18 maybe.”

The crown prince made no precise commitments on expanded rights for women. However, Fatima Mutawa, who helped organize resistance to the Iraqi invaders among women in Kuwait until she fled to Saudi Arabia this week, said she expects that women will be given the right to vote in exchange for their service to the resistance effort.

“If it doesn’t happen, it means we get nothing after this very grieving . . . experience,” she said. “And I don’t think a lesson as hard as this leaves us as we were before. There is no way of going back to the first of August, no way. It’s not a matter of we’ve done something and we want to be rewarded. It’s not that. But the whole structure has to change, socially, religiously, culturally.”

The announcement could eventually have repercussions all over the Persian Gulf, a region of closely held emirates, sheikdoms and monarchies. There has been no elected Parliament in the region since Kuwait’s National Assembly was dissolved because of its bitter criticism of the government at the height of the Iran-Iraq War in 1986.

“What is emerging from the conference here will have a ripple on the region, no doubt,” said Abdullah Bishara, secretary general of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council. “The wealth of oneness and unity will engulf the people of the gulf, all of them, and the waves of hope and reform and change also will engulf (the region). It’s the cry of the determined and the pleas of the hopeful.”

But Bishara also warned that the violent regional conflicts that originally prompted the rulers of Kuwait to suspend the National Assembly still spell trouble for fledgling democracies in the region.

“Kuwait is too small to protect a democracy,” he said. “A tiny Kuwait in a region of instability, characterized by violence, aggression and absence of human rights, needs a strong might to preserve its constitution and democracy. To further a powerful democracy, you need power.”

Kuwait’s opposition leaders held a series of closed-door meetings with the crown prince Friday in which sources said they threatened to walk out of this weekend’s conference on the future of Kuwait unless their demands for political reform were met.

For months before the Iraq’s invasion, Kuwaiti opposition figures were holding demonstrations for democracy. They were not satisfied when the emir called for creation of a consultative assembly, consisting of 25 elected and 50 appointed members, that would study the restoration of the National Assembly.

Opposition leaders, angered that most of the membership would be appointed by the emir, boycotted elections in June. But one of the leaders of the boycott, Chamber of Commerce Chairman Abdulazziz Saqer, signaled the opposition’s confidence in the prime minister’s promises when he stood Saturday and pledged the support of the conferees to the Kuwaiti emir.

“This gathering is not a meeting to denounce or condemn, nor is it a demonstration to support. These matters have been transcended,” Saqer declared. “We have come here to Jidda for an earnest consultation which shall establish the groundwork for the building of a future Kuwait.

“Popular consultation does not need any further justification, and the groundwork has already been established in favor as mentioned by His Highness, and this may play a major social, economic and political role without prejudice to any of the parties, thanks to the implementation of the constitution of 1962 in all its terms,” he added. “The constitution document has been a pact between the people and its leadership, and this has been reaffirmed.”

A Western diplomat who attended the gathering said Saqer’s comments were a key indication of a new alliance between the political opposition and the monarchy to liberate Kuwait.

“The fact that he got up there and said what he said is a pretty good indication that they’ve put aside their differences,” he said.

But opposition leaders said they are still far from certain about the future political landscape of Kuwait, should it be freed from Iraqi occupation.

“This is really what the game was all about,” explained Abdullah Youssef Ghanem, a former Kuwaiti government official and a wealthy businessman now living in London.

“There’s been a contentious confrontation for the last four years between the ruling family and us, and we took the opportunity of this meeting to explain things, and fortunately we got a very good response,” he said. “Obviously, it’s now up to us to do something about it. Now it’s up to us. The real game starts now.”

Bishara, the Gulf Cooperation Council leader, said it is premature to expect that the Kuwaiti decision will immediately foster Western-style democracies around the gulf.

“It is not necessary to have the Western mechanism of democracy and apply it in our area. It doesn’t work,” he said.