JEDDAH, 7 December 2005 — Nearly 40 foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference met in Jeddah yesterday to finalize the agenda of a two-day extraordinary summit that opens in Makkah today.

The ministerial conference was held at the Conference Palace in Jeddah’s upmarket Al-Hamra district amid some of the tightest security measures ever seen in the Kingdom. All roads leading to the palace were closed to the public, with traffic diverted due to security concerns. From early in the morning, cars with tinted glass streamed toward the palace carrying foreign ministers of the OIC’s various Muslim nations and non-Muslim member states.

Before the meeting began, Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal welcomed the delegates and said Saudi Arabia was proud to host them. He said the OIC should seek to counter attacks on Islam from enemies abroad and also from those within who hold deviant ideologies.

Saud said it was up to the OIC countries to correct the image of Islam and defend Islam’s principles through dialogue. He reiterated the views of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah that the summit is a historic opportunity and the resolutions of the summit should be a turning point in the history of the Muslim world.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu also welcomed the foreign ministers. He said that the 10-year action plan of the OIC, to be agreed upon during the summit, would be a road map for common Islamic action. The plan was meant to be a blueprint for confronting the massive challenges Muslims face in political, economic, cultural and scientific fields.

The focus of the preparatory meeting was on four documents to be approved by the heads of the OIC countries during the Makkah summit. The first document, an update on the activities of the OIC since its last meeting, was immediately passed without contention. It was with the second document that the real work began.

The second document, a 10-year strategic action plan, is meant to confront the challenges faced by the OIC countries. Throughout the day the delegates to the preparatory meeting poured over the document’s text, paragraph by paragraph, in minute detail. The strategic plan is based on the recommendations of Muslim scholars and intellectuals who met in Makkah in September.

After hours without word of the proceedings, OIC spokesman Atta Mannan stepped out from the meeting to advise the assembled reporters that the deliberations would most certainly be continuing until late in the night. He said the strategic plan was quite exhaustive, dealing with issues central to politics, economics, science, culture and trade in the OIC nations. The plan discusses the means of tackling Islamophobia, how to deal with the state of minorities in non-OIC states, ways to initiate dialogue with the outside world, methods to improve the image of Islam and tactics to seize the initiative from the deviants and terrorists.

Mannan asserted that the time being taken by the delegates to consider the plan boded well for its success. He believes that the intense interest in the details of the 10-year plan indicates the seriousness being given to the summit by the entire Muslim world.

He said that from the discussions taking place inside the Conference Palace, it was evident the delegates realized that the Muslim world had huge expectations from these meetings. “The fact that the delegates are giving so much attention to the proposals shows they don’t just want to sign on the dotted lines” as was sometimes the case at previous summits, he said.

“The delegates want to ensure that the proposals they are approving for their heads of government to see are truly implementable and practical,” said Mannan. It is true that in the past the OIC made many declarations that went unheeded.

Another important document being prepared for approval yesterday was the Makkah Declaration, which was to be taken up after the delegates finalized the action plan. The Makkah Declaration presents the general view of the current global situation and the situation in OIC countries as well as the common aspirations and hopes of the Muslim world.

The final item that was to be agreed upon at the ministerial meeting was the drafting of the final communiqué. Mannan said that a select committee from among the member states had been entrusted with the task of drafting this document.