ALGIERS/JERUSALEM, 20 March 2005 — Arab foreign ministers began two days of talks in Algiers yesterday ahead of a summit next week, appointing the Palestinian foreign minister to rehash a controversial Middle East peace plan. Ministers are also expected to review plans for the first amendment to the Arab League charter since the 22-member organization’s creation that would set up a pan-Arab “parliament” and streamline decision-making.
The peace plan is “a Jordanian effort and the Palestinian foreign minister has been charged with re-formulating the proposition and submitting it to Arab ministers”, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told journalists. Nasser Al-Qidwa is expected to present his revised plan before the two-day Algiers summit begins on Tuesday.
King Abdallah of Jordan said last week that Arab nations would revive the plan, adapting it from its initial version to ensure that it was better received by Israelis, who rejected it when it was first adopted in March 2002.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa opened yesterday’s talks with a call for members to give the League their full backing, highlighting the “great hopes” being placed on proposals for sweeping reforms of the Cairo-based organization.
Moussa said the League “needs the support of all its members,” especially their “material support,” and denounced what he said was member states passing it the buck on thorny issues. “If the league has responsibilities, the Arab countries also have theirs,” he said.
Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said the success of the summit would be determined by progress on reforms, while specifying other important items that needed the close attention of Arab leaders. He pointed to what he said was the need for a “greater engagement” by Arab countries in Iraq following January’s landmark elections.
Meanwhile, preparations quickened yesterday for Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian militant splinter group ended its informal truce, the first small chink in the fragile demilitarization of the four-year-old uprising. The Israeli Army is to begin pulling non-essential equipment out of Gaza within the next two weeks, in preparation for its withdrawal, a source said in Jerusalem.
He said the equipment that would be moved out initially would not be essential to the security of either troops or Jewish settlers in Gaza. The army also started work Tuesday building bases in southern Israel to house the troops that are to redeploy by the end of the year, the source said. The pullout of settlers is due to start on July 20 and be completed within a few weeks. On Thursday, the army issued an order barring settlers from moving into Gaza.
In another development, the Greek Orthodox Church moved to calm Palestinian jitters over Jerusalem’s future yesterday after an Israeli newspaper said a top church official had secretly sold key property in the holy city to Jews. The church stopped short of confirming the report in Ma’ariv daily that a former aide to Jerusalem Patriarch Irineos had sold Old City land to two groups of unnamed foreign Jewish investors, but said such a deal would have been unauthorized and thus void.
The Ma’ariv report stirred dismay among the Greek Orthodox Church’s 100,000 mainly Arab followers, and prompted the Palestinian Authority to order an official investigation. “These lands are Palestinian lands, not lands from Crete or Greece,” Marwan Toubasi of the Greek Orthodox Central Council told reporters. “We call on the Greek government to intervene and facilitate the inquiry.”
