For a few days at least, while a coup was launched against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, fragile peace prospects in the Middle East appeared to be one of the first casualties. Fortunately, as the coup failed, the prospects have quickly improved.

A proposed Mideast peace conference, although hung up over some emotional issues, including who would represent the Palestinians, has made slow but steady headway after weeks of shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker.The coup attempt threw things into disarray because the Soviets had been expected to act as co-hosts at the October conference.

The meeting is designed to provide first-ever, face-to-face negotiations between Israel and its Arab enemies. If the hard-liners had won, the conference likely would have broken down into an old superpower standoff.

The Soviet foreign minister, in the wake of the failed coup, said his country's foreign policy would proceed on track. Presumably, this includes the Mideast conference.

The peace talks have arisen at least in part because of the absence of any superpower conflict in the Middle East. With both the Kremlin and Washington on the same side, Arab dissidents have no longer been able to play one against the other.

This is why, in the early hours of the coup attempt, the supposed downfall of Gorbachev was greeted with praise and rejoicing by such disreputable types as Iraq's Saddam Hussein, by Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, by hard-liners in Iran and by government newspapers in Jordan, a cheerleader for Iraq in the Persian Gulf war.

In fact, the war against Saddam could not have been waged without Soviet acquiescence, even though Moscow did not actually join the military alliance against Iraq.

But Soviet actions, starting with support for United Nations resolutions that it could have vetoed, participation in the trade embargo, warnings to Saddam, and cooperation with the U.S.-led alliance, all helped produce a united front that effectively muffled any pro-Iraq protest in much of the Middle East.

In Cold War days, the Soviet Union had been seen by many Arab states as a counter-balance against the United States and its backing of Israel. The Kremlin enjoyed the almost-automatic support of many Arabs, including terrorist groups.

When Gorbachev pulled back from mischief-making and confrontational politics, becoming essentially an ally of America in Middle East eyes, the United States was left as the dominant power on the scene.

That, plus the quick defeat of Saddam's Soviet-equipped forces, the collapse of communism around the globe, and the gratitude of oil-rich kingdoms toward the United States, left militant Arabs feeling abandoned and alone.

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The coup, if it had succeeded, would have revived the old scenario of superpower rivalry involving proxies in the Middle East. The Soviet retreat from the Middle East was one of the complaints hard-liners had voiced against Gorbachev.

In fact, one of the first things the hard-liners did - before the coup fell apart around them - was to send a letter to Saddam exploring the possibility of better relations. Fortunately, that letter isn't worth anything now, much to Saddam's dismay.

Israel had been worried that the gates Gorbachev had opened allowing Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel could have slammed shut again, leaving up to 3 million Jews still trapped in the USSR. That would have won the hard-liners instant friends among some Arabs, including the PLO.

All of that is now merely a nasty nightmare and the path to the peace table once again appears the only viable option for disgruntled holdouts in the Middle East.

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