ISTANBUL, 17 June 2004 — Members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries meeting in Turkey yesterday called on the United Nations to send troops to the Palestinian territories, and also reaffirmed their support for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Foreign ministers from the 57-nation OIC issued a statement inviting the UN Security Council to “send UN peacekeeping forces to the Palestinian territories in order to provide international protection to the Palestinian people.”
The officials, gathered in Istanbul on the last day of a three-day meeting, also called for an end to the Israeli occupation of “all Arab territories, including Jerusalem,” and for Israel’s siege of the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to be lifted.
The OIC welcomed the scheduled transfer of power in Iraq but added the handover had to be made in full. A statement issued after the foreign ministers’ meeting in Istanbul said: “We support the process in which the Iraqis will assume their sovereignty. We state that this assumption of authority must be full.” The delegates issued their statement in response to a direct request made by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a letter read to the meeting of foreign ministers on Monday.
Representatives from 57 Muslim nations wrapped up the three-day conference yesterday in which Iraq and the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict dominated talks.
As with previous OIC declarations, the final statement offered full support for the Palestinian people and for a Palestinian state. “We urge the quartet (of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) to work to stop Israeli aggression in all its forms, secure international protection for the Palestinian people and guarantee free movement for the people and their leadership,” the statement said.
The conference statement also said the OIC would take steps to “end the unjust isolation” of Turkish Cypriots and called on the international community to join in this effort.
Late on Tuesday the conference elected Turkey’s Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu as its new secretary general. Founded in 1971, one of the OIC’s main goals is to support Palestinians in the Mideast conflict.
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said yesterday Muslim countries should undertake reforms for modernization without using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a pretext for delay.
“It is a fact that it is not possible to make progress in reforms without a solution to the Palestinian issue,” Gul told a press conference at the end of the OIC meeting.
“But it would be wrong to say ‘we will consider reforms once the Palestinian issue is resolved’. They (Muslim countries) need to address these two questions at the same time,” he added. The minister, however, underlined that the reforms should be carried out by the countries themselves rather than imposed from outside.
