CAIRO - Islamists looked to seal their domination of Egypt's first democratically elected parliament as Egyptians voted Tuesday in the final round of multistage elections.

Party agents flooded the streets with banners and verses from the Koran.

The army faced anger over its handling of protests that left 17 people dead in Cairo last month and an economic crisis has made it harder to meet the aspirations of citizens yearning for a better life since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

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In an industrial region north of Cairo where labor disputes over low wages preceded the wider protests that brought down Mubarak, optimism was high as residents lined up to vote.

"I am glad to be alive to witness this - a free election in Egypt," said Ahmed Ali al-Nagar, a carpenter in his late 50s from Mahalla el-Kubra. "Workers had a big impact on the political outcome we are living through these days."

The end of voting and the convening of parliament, due on Jan. 23, could set the stage for jostling for authority between the ruling military and lawmakers, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. The two sides must work out how to put together a 100-member panel to draft a new constitution.

• Story: Mubarak trial resumes amid acquittal speculation

Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is on track to emerge as the largest bloc by far in parliament, demand the legislature be allowed to choose the panel. However, the military is trying to grab a role for itself to ensure that it continues to be above any civilian scrutiny.

The military has said that presidential elections would be held before the end of June, but it has yet to say whether the drafting of the new constitution should come before the vote, as Islamists want. The generals, who took power after the Feb. 11 fall of  Mubarak, say they will step aside when a new president is sworn in.

'Tahrir Square is still there'
Turnout has been far higher and the election atmosphere less tense than in Mubarak's day, when ballot stuffing, thuggery and vote-rigging guaranteed landslide wins for his party.

In Mahalla and the wealthier city of Mansoura, queues at polling stations were shorter than in previous rounds but voting appeared orderly.

Streets were dotted with the posters of parties, especially the Brotherhood and hardline Islamist al-Nour party, promising an end to corruption.

"I have chosen to vote for the Freedom and Justice Party as I like its talk and I think it has a long history and experience and I think they will help us the most," said Amany al-Mursy, a smiling middle-aged woman from Mansoura.

"And if it does not do as we hoped, Tahrir Square is still there. If something goes wrong, we will go out and say something is wrong and remove the wrong people and replace them." 

Elections for the 498-seat parliament are the first to be held since Mubarak's ouster. In the third and final round of the election, some 14 million voters in a third of Egypt's 27 provinces were picking 150 members of parliament, the first of two days of voting that will be followed by runoffs next week.

The balloting is taking place in areas known as strongholds of Islamist parties and is unlikely to change the trend of the election so far.

In the previous two stages of the election, the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist group that is Egypt's most organized political force, has emerged with between 40-50 percent of the vote so far. The Al-Nour Party, which is based in the more conservative Islamic Salafi movement, has gained around 20 percent.

Liberal and secular groups that led the uprising that forced Mubarak from power have performed poorly in the staggered elections, which started Nov. 28.

The exact numbers of seats won by each group so far could not be known because of the complicated voting system Egypt is using.

Some seats are determined in a direct race between candidates, while others are divvied out in proportion to each party's percentage of overall votes. The election commission is to announce the actual numbers of seats at the end of the entire process. Final election results are due to be announced Jan. 13.

Elections for parliament's toothless upper house have been brought forward by the military and will now be held next month in two stages.

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Updated at 9:45 a.m. ET

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - Turkish warplanes launched airstrikes against suspected Kurdish militants in northern Iraq near the Turkish border overnight, the military said on Thursday, but local officials said the attack killed 35 smugglers who were mistaken for guerrillas.

The Turkish military confirmed it had launched the strikes after unmanned drones spotted suspected rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but said there were no civilians in the area and it was investigating the incident.

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The attack, which Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish party called a "crime against humanity," sparked clashes between hundreds of stone-throwing protesters and police in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's restive mainly Kurdish southeast.

Police responded by firing water cannon and tear gas at the demonstrators. Seven people were detained. One police officer was hurt after being hit by a stone, witnesses said.

Story: 'Pushed aside': Turkey's Kurds lose hope

"We have 30 corpses, all of them are burned. The state knew that these people were smuggling in the region. This kind of incident is unacceptable. They were hit from the air," said Fehmi Yaman, mayor of Uludere in Sirnak province.

The Sirnak governor's office said 35 people had been killed and one wounded during an operation near the border with Uludere district.

Local villagers said the smugglers were carrying drums of diesel on mules and tractors, according to the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News. The diesel drums exploded in the airstrike and burned them to death, they said.

'This is a massacre'
The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said party leaders were heading for the area and that it would hold demonstrations in Istanbul and elsewhere to protest the deaths.

"This is a massacre," BDP Deputy Chairwoman Gultan Kisanak told a news conference in Diyarbakir.

"This country's warplanes bombed a group of 50 of its citizens to destroy them. This is a war crime and a crime against humanity," she said.

The Turkish military said it had learned the PKK had sent many militants to the Sinat-Haftanin area, where the strikes occurred in northern Iraq, to retaliate after recent militant losses in clashes.

"It was established from unmanned aerial vehicle images that a group was within Iraq heading towards our border," it said.

"Given that the area in which the group was spotted is often used by terrorists and that it was moving towards our border at night, it was deemed necessary for our air force planes to attack and they struck the target at 21:37-22:24 (2:37-8:24 p.m. ET)," it said.

"The place where the incident occurred is the Sinat-Haftanin area in northern Iraq where there is no civilian settlement and where the main camps of the separatist terrorist group are located," it said.

The military added that an investigation was in progress, without referring to any deaths in the strikes.

The Turkish government, which has been battling the PKK since the group took up arms in 1984 to fight for an ethnic Kurdish homeland, was not immediately available for comment.

The incident threatens to spoil efforts to forge Turkish-Kurdish consensus for a planned new constitution that is expected to address the issue of Kurdish rights.

Smugglers or militants?
Smuggling is an important source of income for locals in provinces along the Iraqi border, with many villagers involved in bringing fuel, cigarettes and other goods from Iraqi villages on the other side of the border.

PKK militants also cross the border in these areas.

"There were rumors that the PKK would cross through this region. Images were recorded of a crowd crossing last night, hence an operation was carried out," a Turkish security official said.

"We could not have known whether these people were (PKK) group members or smugglers," he said.

Television images showed a line of corpses covered by blankets on a barren hillside, with a crowd of people gathered around, some with their head in their hands and crying.

Donkeys carried corpses down the hillside to be loaded into vehicles and taken to hospital.

Security sources said those killed were carrying canisters of diesel on mules and their bodies were found on the Iraqi side of the border.

They said the dead were from Uludere on the Turkish side of the border on what was a regular smuggling route.

The Firat news agency, which has close ties to the PKK, said that 17 people were still believed to be missing. It said those killed were aged around 17-20.

In northern Iraq, PKK spokesman Ahmet Deniz condemned the strike and said F-16 jets had bombed a group of around 50 people taking goods across the border and that 19 people were missing.

The PKK, regarded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, launches attacks on Turkish forces in southeastern Turkey from hideouts inside the remote Iraqi mountains.

Turkish leaders vowed revenge in October with air and ground strikes after the PKK killed 24 Turkish soldiers in one of the deadliest attacks since the PKK took up arms in 1984 in a conflict in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.

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TRIPOLI - U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Tripoli Saturday, taking advantage of the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi in an eight-month civil war to become the first Pentagon chief to set foot on Libyan soil.

But Panetta has indicated that the U.S. will give more time to gain control of the militias that overthrew Gadhafi before determining how to help the fledgling government.

---

"The last thing you want to do is to try to impose something on a country that has just gone through what the Libyans have gone through," said Panetta on Friday before landing in Tripoli.

"They've earned the right to try to determine their future. They've earned the right to try to work their way through the issues that they're going to have to confront," he said.

Libya's weak interim government is struggling to assert control two months after the capturing and killing of Gadhafi.

Late Thursday the International Criminal Court said his violent killing may have been a war crime.

• Story: Gadhafi killing may be war crime, ICC prosecutor says

Panetta will meet with members of the transitional government in Tripoli on Saturday, and make an emotional visit to what historians believe is the gravesite of 13 U.S. sailors killed in 1804. Those deaths were caused by the explosion of the U.S. ship Intrepid, which was slipping into the Tripoli harbor to destroy pirate ships that had captured an American frigate.

While eager to encourage a new democracy that emerged from Libya's Arab Spring revolution, the U.S. is wary of appearing as trying to exert too much influence after an eight-month civil war. At the same time, however, leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere worry about how well the newly formed National Transitional Council can resolve clashes between militia groups in the North African nation.

Sanctions lifted
Ahead of Panetta's visit, the Obama administration announced it had lifted sanctions the U.S. imposed on Libya in February to choke off the Gadhafi regime's funds while it was violent suppressing peaceful protests. The U.S. at the time blocked some $37 billion in Libyan assets, and a White House statement said Friday's action "unfreezes all government and central bank funds within U.S. jurisdiction, with limited exceptions."

• Story: US lifts economic sanctions on Libya

Recovery of the assets "will allow the Libyan government to access most of its worldwide holdings and will help the new government oversee the country's transition and reconstruction in a responsible manner," the White House said.

But the continuing violence in Libya, including recent skirmishes between revolutionary fighters and national army troops near Tripoli's airport, reflects the difficulties that Libya's leaders face as they try to forge an army, integrating some of the militias and disarming the rest.

Officials acknowledge that process could take months, and that they can't force the militias to go along.

Panetta told reporters Friday that his visit to the Libyan capital will give him a better sense of the situation and allow him to pay tribute to the people for bringing down Gadhafi and trying to establish a democratic government.

"It seems to me they are working through some very difficult issues to try to bring that country together," said Panetta. "It's not going to be easy. This is not a country that has a tradition of democratic institutions and representative government. This is going to take some work "

US to provide assistance
But he said he has seen indications that the Libyans are making progress.

"I think that any country like Libya that was able to do what they did and show the courage that they did in making the changes that took place there — I'm confident that ultimately they're going to be able to succeed in putting a democracy together," he said.

Panetta said the U.S. is prepared to provide Libya any assistance it needs.

By traveling to Libya, however, Panetta was highlighting the different approaches that the U.S. and other countries are taking with respect to rebellions against tyrannical leaders.

The U.S. and NATO provided months of military power and assistance to the Libyan rebels, but officials have made it clear they do not intend to do the same in Syria despite the furor over President Bashar Assad's crackdown on pro-reform demonstrators.

Panetta, who met with Turkish officials Friday, said they did not discuss any specific steps to increase pressure on Assad to step down.

But they talked about the need to work together with other nations to "get Assad to do the right thing."

At some point, he said, he believes that the type of uprisings that happened in Libya and elsewhere across the Middle East will take place in Syria.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Vandals set fire to another mosque in the West Bank on Thursday and defaced it with Hebrew graffiti after Israeli forces tore down structures in a settler-outpost built without government approval.

Suspicion fell on Jewish extremists widely assumed to be behind stepped-up violence against Palestinians and the Israeli military.

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The governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghanam, said arsonists doused the mosque in the village of Burqa with gasoline, then set it afire.

"Thankfully, the torching occurred shortly before dawn prayers, and the villagers who arrived at the mosque put out the fire," said Mahmoud al-Habash, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs.

'War'
The Hebrew words for "war" and "Mitzpe Yitzhar" were painted in red on a wall, and the Israeli military said carpets and chairs were burned.

Mitzpe Yitzhar is an unauthorized Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank where Israeli security forces demolished two structures early Thursday.

• PhotoBlog: Israel tears down unauthorized outpost

The vandalism appeared to be the latest act of defiance by militant settlers whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to rein in after similar attacks on mosques and vandalism at an Israeli military base.

On Wednesday, radical Jews burnt the exterior of an unused Jerusalem mosque and scrawled "Death to the Arabs" on its walls.

A day earlier, young Jewish settlers rampaged through a military base in the occupied West Bank. The attack against the armed forces, an institution revered by many Israelis, sent shock waves through Israel.

In a statement on Thursday, Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the settler attacks and said they were "pouring oil on the flames" of hostility towards Israel in a tense Middle East already in political turmoil.

The Palestinian Authority described the mosque burnings as "hate crimes" and in a statement called on the international community to hold the Israeli government responsible for settler violence.

In recent years, settlers have attacked Palestinian and Israeli military targets in retaliation for Israeli government operations they see as overly sympathetic to Palestinians.

Night-time sabotage
The increasing frequency of the attacks, the sparse number of arrests and paucity of indictments have generated allegations that the Israeli government isn't acting forcefully enough against extremists after two years of violence.

On Wednesday, following an assault on an Israeli military base, Netanyahu approved measures to clamp down on extremists, including giving soldiers the authority to make arrests and to ban extremists from contentious areas.

Attempts to demolish unauthorized outposts have been resisted by radicals who scuffle with troops or carry out night-time sabotage to inflict what they call the "price tag" for "selling out" the settlements.

Most countries regard as illegal all of the settlements that Israel has built in territory it captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek for a future state. Israel cites historical and biblical links to the land it refers to as Judea and Samaria.

Although Israel continues to expand larger official settlements, it has been evacuating smaller, unauthorized outposts, in line with court orders to move against them.

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BAGHDAD - After billions of dollars and nearly nine years of training, American troops are leaving behind an Iraqi security force arguably capable of providing internal security but unprepared to defend the nation against foreign threats at a time of rising tensions throughout the Middle East.

Building up an Iraqi military and police able to protect the country became a key goal of the United States and its allies after they defeated and then disbanded the Saddam Hussein-era force in 2003. As America's role in Iraq fades, the results appear at best incomplete.

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Iraqi forces — currently about 700,000 strong — have been largely responsible for security in Baghdad and other cities since 2009, carrying out their own raids and other combat operations against insurgents.

 

• Iraq pipeline bombed, testing 40,000 oil troops

More than 10,000 Iraqi soldiers and police have been killed since the new force was established — more than double the number of American military deaths. Few if any military forces in the Arab world have as much combat experience within the ranks.

"They can kick a door in and knock out a network's leadership as good as anybody I've seen," said U.S. Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, commander of the NATO training mission, which will soon be disbanded. "I would say that they have the discipline and the tenacity to fight as well as anybody I've ever seen."

Nevertheless, Iraqi forces have their work cut out for them. They will be operating in a country which, although quieter than a few years ago, saw more people killed, wounded and kidnapped last year than in Afghanistan, according to U.S. figures.

The departure of American forces this month also leaves Iraq vulnerable to threats from its neighbors — Iran to the east, Turkey to the north and Syria to the west. A major Arab country of about 30 million people with some of the world's largest proven petroleum reserves is incapable of defending its borders in one of the most unstable parts of the world.

The Iraqi military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, has said it would take until at least 2020 for Iraq to defend its airspace. Without a well-trained and equipped air force, Iraqi ground forces would be hard-pressed to defend against incursions across borders with few natural barriers and little cover from vegetation.

"An army without an air force is exposed," Zebari was quoted as saying in a report last October by the U.S. agency responsible for overseeing Iraqi reconstruction.

Even though a full-scale ground invasion from its neighbors may seem remote, the possibility of incursions from Turkey against Kurdish rebels, or Iranians along disputed border stretches or even from a Syria facing an internal revolt cannot be ruled out, especially at a time when the Arab Spring and the looming showdown between the West and Iran are raising tensions throughout the region.

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TEHRAN, Iran - President Barack Obama should apologize for sending an unmanned spy plane into Iranian territory rather than asking for it back after it was seized, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Iran announced on December 4 it had downed the spy plane in the eastern part of the country, near Afghanistan. It has since shown the plane on television and said it is close to cracking its technological secrets.

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On Monday, Obama told a news conference: "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond." Iranian officials had already said they would not return the drone.

• Story: Obama to Iran: We want our drone back

Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized Obama's handling of the situation in an interview with CNN late Monday, slamming him for refusing to take action.

Cheney said that he was told Obama was presented with several options that included plans for recovery or destruction of the downed drone. "He rejected all of them," Cheney said.

"He certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground in an airstrike but he didn't take any of the options, he asked nicely for them to return it," he said.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference Tuesday that Obama had "forgotten that our air space was violated, a spying operation conducted and international law trampled."

Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the official IRNA news agency: "The U.S. spy drone is the property of Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran will decide what it wants to do in this regard."

Meanwhile Ahmadinejad appeared on Venezuelan state TV Tuesday and said Iran had "been able to control" the drone, CNN reported.

"Those who have been in control of this spy plane surely will analyze the plane's system," he reportedly told VTV in Farsi.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Syrians were voting in local elections Monday as battles between troops and army defectors spread a day after fierce battles in the country's south.

According to reports, the turnout was expected to be low as many voters feared violence. Al-Jazeera reported that six people were killed in protests, according to the Syrian Revolution General Commission.

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The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported new clashes in the northwestern region of Idlib. It said fighting also continued for a second day in the southern province of Daraa.

Sunday's fighting between army defectors and government troops was one of the biggest clashes in Syria's nine-month uprising. A strike also shut businesses in a new gesture of civil disobedience.

• Major battle in Syria; shops shut by strike

Al-Jazeera reported that nearly 43,000 candidates were running for seats in Syria's 1,337 administration units.

The elections were being held in response to the protests and are part of a series of reforms the regime is putting in place, authorities said according to the BBC.

"The new election law contains the necessary guarantees for a democratic, transparent and honest election," Khalaf al-Ezzawi, head of Syria's election committee, the BBC reported.

• UN urges world to protect Syrian civilians

The opposition does not consider the vote a legitimate concession by the regime because it coincides with a deadly crackdown.

The United Nations says more than 4,000 Syrians have been killed since March. President Bashar al-Assad says the number of dead is far lower and most of them have been from the state security forces.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Story updated 12pm ET/9am PT: President Obama welcomed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to the White House Monday. Sitting side by side in the Oval Office, the two leaders posed briefly for cameras but did not make statements. They will hold a news conference together later.

Story published 6.30am ET/3.30am PT:

WASHINGTON - With the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq in its final days, President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will meet at the White House Monday to discuss the next phase of the relationship between their countries.

They will have plenty to discuss.

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The withdrawal of all American troops on Dec. 31 marks the end of a nearly nine-year war that has been deeply divisive in both the U.S. and Iraq. While Obama and al-Maliki have pledged to maintain strong ties, the contours of the partnership between Washington and Baghdad remain murky, especially with Iran eager to assert influence over neighboring Iraq. And serious questions remain about Iraq's capacity to stabilize both its politics and security.

Yet the end of the war still marks a promise kept for Obama, one the White House is eager to promote. In addition to his meeting with al-Maliki, Obama will mark the milestone Wednesday when he speaks to troops at North Carolina's Fort Bragg. And he thanked service members and their families for their sacrifices when he attended the annual Army-Navy football game Saturday.

As of late last week, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq had dwindled to about 8,000, down from 170,000 at the war's peak in 2007.

• Story: NYT: Detainee in Iraq poses dilemma as US exit nears

Monday's meeting between Obama and al-Maliki is expected to focus heavily on how the U.S. and Iraq will continue to cooperate on security issues without the presence of American troops. Iraqi leaders have said they want U.S. military training help for their security forces but have been unable to agree on what type of help they'd like or what protections they would be willing to give American trainers.

The White House said Obama and al-Maliki would also discuss cooperation on energy, trade and education.

Obama and al-Maliki will also hold a joint news conference at the White House, then lay wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery, where some of the nearly 4,500 Americans killed in the Iraq war are buried.

 

Iranian influence could grow
Looming over the talks are concerns among U.S. officials over how Iraq's relationship with Iran will develop with a significantly smaller U.S. presence in the region.

Al-Maliki has insisted that Iraq will chart its future according to its own national interests, not the dictates of Iran or any other country. But some U.S. officials have suggested that Iranian influence in Iraq would inevitably grow once American troops depart. Both countries have Shiite majorities and are dominated by Shiite political groups. Many Iraqi politicians spent time in exile in Iran during Saddam's repressive regime, and one of al-Maliki's main allies — anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — is believed to spend most of his time in Iran.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said how Baghdad chooses to orient itself will significantly influence the future of Iraq's relationship with the U.S.

• Story: US on Iraq security: 'We really don't know what's going to happen'

"A lot of this really comes down to, what kind of role is Iraq going to play in regional security?" Alterman said. "Is it going to be a place where bad people come and go, or is it going to play a role in calming down a region that needs some calming down?"

The first hints as to how Iraq will assert itself in the region may come from how it handles the troubles in Syria, where a bloody government crackdown on protesters has killed more than 4,000 people, according to the United Nations.

The Obama administration has called for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down. But Iraq has been much more circumspect, with al-Maliki warning of civil war if Assad falls and abstaining from Arab League votes suspending Syria's membership and imposing sanctions. Those positions align Iraq more closely with Iran, a key Syrian ally.

The U.S. has warned Iraq's neighbors that even though American troops are leaving, the U.S. will maintain a significant presence there. About 16,000 people are working at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, making it America's largest mission in the world.

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - About 18 months before the Egyptian uprising that would doom Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. diplomatic cable was sent from Cairo. It described Mubarak as the likely president-for-life and said his regime's ability to intimidate critics and rig elections was as solid as ever.

Around the same time, another dispatch to the State Department came from the American Embassy in Tunisia. In a precise foreshadowing of the revolts to come, it said the country's longtime leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, had "lost touch" and faced escalating anger from the streets, according to once-classified memos posted by Wikileaks.

---

So what was it? Was America blindsided or bunkered down for the Arab Spring?

The case is often made that Washington was caught flatfooted and now must adapt to diminished influence in a Middle East with new priorities. But there is an alternative narrative: that the epic events of 2011 are an opportunity to enhance Washington's role in a region hungry for democracy and innovation, and to form new strategic alliances.

Cost of 'Arab Spring' more than $55 billion - IMF

There is no doubt that Washington was jolted by the downfall of its Egyptian and Tunisian allies. The revolutions blew apart the regimes' ossified relationships with the U.S. and cleared the way for long-suppressed Islamist groups that eye the West with suspicion.

But declaring a twilight for America in the Mideast ignores a big caveat: The Persian Gulf. There are deep U.S. connections among the small but economically powerful and diplomatically adept monarchies, emirates and sheikdoms, which so far have ridden out the upheavals and are increasingly flexing their political clout around the Arab world.

The Gulf Arabs and America are, in many ways, foreign policy soul mates. Both share grave misgivings about Iran's expanding military ambitions and its nuclear program. The Gulf hosts crucial U.S. military bases — including the Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain — and is an essential part of the Pentagon's strategic blueprint for the Mideast after this year's U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

In summary: America's influence took blows from the Arab Spring, but also remains hitched to the rising stars in the Gulf.

Transformation
"America has lost the predictability of friends like Mubarak," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "But, at the same time, its allies in the Gulf are on the rise. So I would call it a shuffle for America. Maybe a step back in some places, but not in others."

Led by hyper-wealthy Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Gulf rulers have stepped up their games in various ways as the region's political center of gravity drifts in their direction.

Libya's new PM balances demands of ex-rebels, West

NATO's airstrikes in Libya got important Arab credibility from warplane contributions by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The Gulf's six-nation political bloc also has tried to negotiate an exit for Yemen's protest-battered president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and has taken the lead in Arab pressures on Syria's Bashar Assad, one of Iran's most critical partners.

Yet the Gulf rulers' desire for change stops at their own borders. In March, they authorized a Saudi-led military force to help their neighbor, Bahrain, defend its 200-year-old unelected Sunni dynasty against pro-reform protests by the island's Shiite majority.

And here lies one of the paradoxes for U.S. statecraft in the Middle East: to align with rulers who are firmly vested in the status quo, but not be cast as the spoilers of the Arab uprisings.

"No one is immune from the waves of change," said Nicholas Burns, a former No. 3 official at the State Department. "There's certainly an effort to advise the Gulf Arabs to continue to get on the side of reform."

Burns believes the Arab Spring has taught U.S. diplomats valuable lessons in patience and perspective.

"We are witnessing something that is transformative and whose full impact will play out over years, maybe decades, ahead," said Burns, a professor of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Here is one of those times when the U.S. has to not overact and overreact."

But when events move fast, that may not be the easiest advice to follow. Mubarak was a loyal guardian of Egypt's groundbreaking 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and there is no certainty that whoever succeeds him will do likewise. Meanwhile, the Palestinians have overridden U.S. objections and asked the U.N. for statehood.

"Our ability to influence is limited today more than at any time in the last 35 years," said Graeme Bannerman, a former State Department analyst on Mideast affairs, at a conference in November co-sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace.

That assessment may have some traction in places such as in Tunisia or Egypt, where the U.S. is widely viewed as tainted by its long alliance with Mubarak. A burning U.S. flag is still a common sight in Cairo's Tahrir Square, epicenter of the Egyptian uprising.

'No longer Big Brother'
But ask about America's pull in other Mideast points — the free-spending Gulf, the new proto-state in Libya, even slow-healing Iraq and its Iran-friendly government — and the conversation is different. It is more measured about how the U.S. fits into the new Mideast. There is more talk about the arc of history rather than the latest sound bite.

"It's too early to tell whether U.S. influence has diminished or indeed any change will happen because the Arab Spring is still in process," said Nawaf Tell, former director of the University of Jordan Strategic Studies Center.

Tell sees the Arab Spring as the death rattle of the Arab revolutions and coups defined by the all-powerful state and embodied by winner-take-all leaders: Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Nasser (1954), Libya's Moammar Gadhafi (1969), the 1970 putsch in Syria that brought Hafez Assad to power in Syria and now a dynasty-in-peril under his son, Bashar, and so on.

"These regimes have exhausted their revolutionary credibility and have seen their legitimacy go bankrupt," Tell said. And as with any big unraveling, there are new rules in the aftermath.

This may mean a less privileged position for U.S. interests and more legwork for Washington's envoys, said Morris Reid, managing director of the Washington-based BGR Group, which works often in liaison roles between Mideast officials and U.S. companies.

The U.S. approach to the region "will be better," he said. "Not necessarily stronger."

"The U.S. will have to work harder for intelligence, diplomatic relations, commercial deals," said Reid after meetings in mid-November at the Dubai Airshow, where Boeing Co. made a slew of deals including a record $18 billion order from the fast-growing air carrier Emirates. "The U.S. will now have to prove their value as allies."

A showcase for that in the coming year is likely to be Iraq, and the contest for influence between neighboring Iran and the U.S. after U.S. military forces are gone. That rivalry in turn is influenced by events in Syria, Iran's main Arab ally, and the concerns of emirates and sheikdoms that lie just across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

"Look at it this way: If you accept that the Arab Spring is a once in a four- or five-generations moment, then, of course, it will reorder the entire game of influence and politics by the big powers," said Salman Shaikh, director of The Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

"U.S. leadership does matter," he continued. "It's naive to say it will become irrelevant. But it's also wrong not to notice that America's era as the region's diplomatic superpower is coming to an end. The Arab Spring has brought much more independent-minded diplomacy by nations and a new empowerment among Arab people. America is a big player, but no longer Big Brother."

Associated Press writer Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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