JEDDAH, 9 July 2007 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah held talks here yesterday with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa on major issues and developments in the region.
The Arab League chief was in the Kingdom on the first leg of a tour that will also take him to Syria to discuss the crisis in Lebanon.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal and Intelligence Chief Prince Muqrin attended the meeting at Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah.
After his meeting with the Saudi ruler, Moussa flew to Damascus where he will meet President Bashar Assad and other Syrian leaders for talks on Lebanon, according to an Arab diplomat.
King Abdullah and Moussa discussed renewed Arab mediation in the Lebanese political crisis that has paralyzed the country for more than seven months, Arab diplomatic sources said.
An Arab League mission to Beirut last month ended with no progress in getting Lebanon’s feuding political factions to the negotiating table.
Reviving the mediating mission “depends on the results of Moussa’s talks in Damascus,” one Arab diplomat told AFP. The Lebanese political crisis, the worst to rock the country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, will also be the focus of a Lebanese inter-party dialogue to be hosted by Paris on July 14-16.
It erupted last November with the resignation of six ministers from the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, with the Hezbollah-led opposition demanding a unity government in which it would have a veto.
Also yesterday, King Abdullah met with Somalia’s Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi and discussed the latest situation in the East African country.
