The chain reaction

The Telegraph:

"The war in Iraq has started a political chain reaction in the Middle East: last month Iran owned up to making weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and now Libya has agreed to dismantle its hitherto secret nuclear programme.

"But will the region's other 'rogue states' follow their example? Syria, desperately isolated as the last bastion of Ba'athism, is under intense pressure to bend to America's will.

"British officials also point to the beginnings of other changes that may transform the region - Iran may be encouraged to step up its co-operation with the West; Saudi Arabia is gently accelerating the painfully slow process of political reform; and Sudan, once home to Osama bin Laden, is close to concluding a western-mediated peace agreement to end its long-running civil war.

"Syria has been strikingly silent amid the weekend's chorus of congratulations for Libya's announcement that it would dismantle its weapons of mass destruction as part of a deal with America and Britain."

"Syria is trying to keep its head down," said one senior Whitehall source. "But it is quite vulnerable now. It has no friends."

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