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For Qatar, relations with West are a balancing act

DOHA, Qatar — For Sheik Hamad bin Jasim bin Jaber al-Thani, Qatar's prime minister and chief diplomat, it's natural to play host to the U.S. military while sharing one of the world's largest natural-gas fields with Iran.

Qatar's royal leadership has learned to balance contradictory political interests as a means of national preservation for the tiny country. Saudi Arabia, a kingdom friendly to the United States, looms on Qatar's western border, and Muslim clerics rule Iran just across the Gulf.

The Qatari strategy may be a peek into the future of international politics. As the U.S. and Europe increasingly rely on new sources of energy and capital, they may be dealing with more independent-minded countries like Qatar that play all sides to their advantage and favor no major power exclusively.

"Our ambition is to have prosperity for our people," Hamad, who also oversees Qatar's $60 billion investment fund, said in an interview in the booming seaside capital, Doha. "We would like to be friendly with everyone."

Qatar is asserting itself economically. Tankers filled with Qatari natural gas will arrive routinely at a Texas terminal by 2009. Enriched by the third-largest gas reserves in the world, Qatar plans to invest as much as $15 billion this year shoring up U.S. and European banks struggling with mortgage losses.

Awash in cash, Qatar "is trying to think of the future, and they want to place themselves as an important player" in the Gulf, says Jean-François Seznec, a specialist in the Gulf's petrochemical industry at Georgetown University and a senior adviser to PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm.

"They're next to a very big power, Saudi Arabia, with which they have a rather mediocre relationship," Seznec says. "They're next to Iran, a powerful country of 75 million people. They're caught with the Americans in Iraq. They have to be very careful."

Five years ago, U.S. military commanders based in Qatar ran much of the air war against Saddam Hussein's forces in the opening stages of the attack on Iraq.

Now it is hard for the U.S. to gauge the loyalty of the desert nation, which nonetheless still allows American forces to use an air base to send supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In November, Qatar coaxed Arab states to attend President George W. Bush's Middle East peace summit in Annapolis, Maryland. A month later it upset the United States by inviting the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, to a summit in Doha.

U.S. diplomats have objected to what they consider biased coverage of the Iraq war on the pioneering Arabic satellite news station Al Jazeera, which is financed by the Qatari government. They also say Qatar isn't joining with other Arab governments to pressure Syria to stop interfering in Lebanon.

Still, Qatar isn't always out of sync with U.S. interests. While Qatar defended Hezbollah in its 2006 war against Israel and gave millions to rebuild homes in the militant group's stronghold in southern Lebanon, the emirate still welcomes Israeli athletes and executives.

Last month, Hamad attended the opening of the Brookings Doha Center, affiliated with a Mideast policy unit at the Brookings Institution in Washington that is funded by the Israeli entrepreneur Haim Saban. Qatar also houses branches of U.S. universities, including Georgetown, which is based in Washington, and Carnegie Mellon of Pittsburgh.

The royals have a history of sheltering the unwanted of the world: Chechen rebels, members of Saddam's family and former mujahedeen from the Afghan-Soviet war. The Qaeda operative and alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed stayed there before he slipped away and was later captured by the Americans, according to a U.S. commission that investigated the attacks.

"They keep the exiles here as a way to guard against terrorism," says Patrick Theros, a former U.S. ambassador to Qatar who now heads the U.S.-Qatar Business Council, based in Washington.

It's part of the balancing act, Qatari officials and Middle East observers say - both unique and necessary. Qataris "have to do their little maneuver," says Peter Rodman, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense now at Brookings in Washington. "That's how they survive."

Protecting its gas wealth is the country's chief objective. Qatar produces 32 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year, and most of that is sold to Asia. Within three years, total LNG production may reach 77 million tons, making Qatar the world's biggest exporter.

That leap will occur as LNG ships start heading to the U.S. Gulf Coast. ExxonMobil is building a $1 billion facility near Port Arthur, Texas, to unload and process Qatari gas.

Qatar's economic influence in Europe and the United States is already soaring. When Hamad said in an interview last month that Qatar had started purchasing shares of the Credit Suisse Group, based in Zurich, the bank's stock rose 3.2 percent and carried other European shares higher.

Democratically, Qatar is moving in a direction the United States favors for the Arab world. Women can vote, the country is holding municipal elections and planning for its first parliamentary elections later this year.

All this progress hasn't stirred Washington. Bush skipped Qatar during his Gulf trip last month, even as his military commanders praised Qatar's cooperation.

Asked about Bush's snub, Hamad says simply: "It's his choice."

A version of this article appears in print on   in The International Herald Tribune. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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