JEDDAH, 20 May — Muslim countries should put aside their differences and unite to face challenges that have emerged since the anti-US terror attacks, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said yesterday.
“Unity, solidarity and bypassing differences are the first conditions for the success of joint Islamic action to face international challenges” resulting from the attacks, said OIC Secretary-General Abdelouaed Belkeziz.
“The serious political and military consequences (of the attacks) have been exploited by enemies of the Islamic world, particularly Israel, as a justification to launch an unfair campaign of baseless accusations and (to carry out) immoral and inhuman violations,” he charged.
Belkeziz was addressing OIC officials at the opening of a four-day meeting in Jeddah to prepare for the conference of foreign ministers of the 57-member OIC slated for late June in Sudan.
He said “Afghanistan and Palestine have been the most affected” by the negative impact of the US attacks.
Belkeziz called for “exerting maximum effort to repel plots being hatched against the Muslim world, especially attempts to link Islam and Muslims with international terrorism and accusing them of opposing Western civilization.”
The meeting of the Jeddah-based organizaation is expected to discuss a number of political and economic issues concerning Muslims all over the world, particularly the position of Muslim minorities.
The officials will submit their recommendations to the foreign ministers’ conference of the OIC, which has condemned the New York and Washington attacks as “anathema to all human conventions and values.”
