In Bangor, Cohen urges quiet diplomacy

BANGOR – Former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen on Friday urged the Bush administration to undertake quiet diplomacy with U.S. allies in the Islamic world, where fragile regimes already face social turbulence at home.

“We must take extraordinary means to keep our profile low,” Cohen said Friday, just as rising rhetoric from the Bush administration has become the subject of recent media coverage. “We must take into account the stability of the regimes that are sympathetic to us because they know their survival depends on our ability to secure them.

“But while they may know that, we can’t maintain a high profile and publicly insist on what they must do,” he said while at a local hotel.

Cohen, back in the city to help his former aide and former Bangor Mayor Timothy Woodcock officially kick off his 2nd District congressional campaign today, said that publicly demanding unconditional support of American allies in the Middle East could lead to further revolts such as those seen in Pakistan, where a powerful internal fundamentalist challenge is well entrenched.

“He has taken a bold step,” Cohen said of the public support Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has offered the United States despite an undercurrent of resistance from factions still stinging from U.S. sanctions placed on the country because of its nuclear weapons testing. “There is enormous pressure on him.”

And as for Bush’s very public ultimatum of countries either being “with us or … with the terrorists,” Cohen said, “On one level that’s right, but it’s not that simple.”

Bush will face a “difficult challenge,” Cohen said, in maintaining a coalition of Islamic states during what promises to be a long struggle against terrorism, even if U.S. forces were able to disband Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

While the Clinton administration failed to take bin Laden out in a 1998 missile strike on the suspected terrorist’s training grounds in Afghanistan, Cohen said the Bush administration was in a position to fare better, benefiting from substantial international outrage over the terrorist attacks on America.

While the shocking hijackings that killed thousands in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, might have solidified support “for now,” Cohen warned it would take delicate diplomacy to secure those allegiances.

Just as the Cohen’s team faced challenges in maintaining fragile Islamic unions after the Gulf War, he said, keeping together a Mid-east coalition will also prove difficult for Bush during a lengthy “war” in which total victory could never be declared.

“You’ll never be in a position to say it is totally eradicated,” Cohen said Friday of the brand of terrorism that claimed thousands of American lives when suicide hijackers slammed three passenger jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11.

“There will always be extremists, but you can minimize the effect.”

Lessening the chance that there will be a repeat of Sept. 11 or an incident of biological or chemical warfare will eventually include strict sanctions against terrorist states and undoubtedly require an increased degree of cooperation from friendly Islamic countries, Cohen said.

But the former defense secretary didn’t see much hope for further negotiations with Afghanistan’s Taliban government, fundamentalist Muslims who have waffled at Bush’s demand to turn over the elusive bin Laden, who has been granted refuge there since his expulsion from Saudi Arabia.

“I think it’s pretty clear that they must cooperate and turn him over or force him out,” said Cohen, who praised the president’s refusal to negotiate. “There should be no choice in that.”