The meeting, the first high-level gathering of the six-nation oil-rich alliance since US-led forces put an end to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule last week, comes as serious questions are being raised about further American plans for the region.

"Logic suggests that the meeting should be crucial ... to reassess the internal structures and foundations of the member states ... and the GCC's future," leading Saudi political analyst Turki al-Hamad said Monday.

"If the GCC does not evolve and upgrade its performance, it had better cease to exist ... It must become a united entity with a single foreign policy and similar interests," Hamad, a professor of political science, told AFP.

The bloc, grouping Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was established 22 years ago in the wake of Iran's Islamic revolution, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war.

"The reasons and motives for the establishment of the GCC no longer exist today. So it is high time member states took clear-cut decisions on internal reform and democratization," he added.

GCC Secretary General Abdulrahman al-Attiya said the meeting would "tackle current regional developments in the wake of the fall of the Iraqi regime."

The GCC states have called for the Iraqi people to be allowed to choose their own government and decide their future and urged an end of the US-British occupation as soon as possible.

Some GCC member states now have conflicting national interests, but "they must realize that long-term GCC interests are far more important than individual interests," Hamad said.

"Domestic reform is the first defense line. Citizens must feel they have a say in their own future. Reforms can be called democracy or political participation, but they have to be carried out. We must learn the Iraqi lesson," he warned.

As early as February, US Secretary of State Colin Powell made it known that ousting Saddam Hussein's Baath regime was a beginning to fundamentally reshaping the Middle East in a positive way for the United States and its allies.

His comments dovetailed with those of other administration officials and pro-Republican commentators who believe a democratic pro-Western regime in Baghdad would have a domino effect in the region.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a press conference Wednesday that democratization would not be a "threat" to the Middle East.

"Separation of legislative, executive and judiciary powers will not create upheavals in the region ... The threat comes from guns and bombs ... Democracy never threatened any country, I don't see why it should threaten the Middle East," he said.

But on Monday Prince Saud announced an "emergency regional conference" in Riyadh on Friday of foreign ministers of countries neighbouring Iraq to review the fallout of the war.

"The conference comes in response to the current circumstances and developments in Iraq, which affect the Iraqi people in particular, and the reperucussions on the countries of the region in general," he said in a statement carried by the official SPA agency.

Three of the six GCC states practice a restricted form of representative democracy through elections to parliamentary bodies.

But GCC heavyweight Saudi Arabia only has an appointed "Shura," or consultative, Council, and in all six states the ruling families concentrate real power in their own unelected hands.

"Before September 11, 2001 and the fall of Iraq, there had been several options for the GCC states. Now they face the question of 'to be or not to be'. Options are narrowing with the lapse of time," Hamad said.

"We must act -- and quickly. Otherwise we may reach a stage when things will be imposed on us," he warned.

SPACE.WIRE