CAIRO/GAZA CITY, 31 July 2007 — The Arab League met here yesterday to discuss recent efforts by its representatives to rally support for an Arab initiative to make peace with Israel, the group said in a draft statement.
The foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab group were also expected to formulate a response to US President George W. Bush’s recent call for an international Mideast peace conference to be held later this year.
During yesterday’s meeting, Arab League chief Amr Moussa reported on the outcome of the group’s efforts over the past two months to promote the Arab peace plan, which offers Israel full peace with all Arab nations if it withdraws from territories captured in the 1967 war and allows the creation of a Palestinian state. The statement did not provide details of the report.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and his Jordanian counterpart, Abdul Ilah Khatib, visited Israel last week to formally present the initiative. Aboul Gheit, upon his return to Egypt, speculated that other Arab countries may join in future contacts with Israel.
Yesterday’s draft statement stressed that peace cannot be achieved unless Israel fully withdraws from all occupied Arab territories, solves the Palestinian refugee issue and allows the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The ministers also called on the international community to exert pressure on Israel to release more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam did not attend yesterday’s meeting, but his country issued a memorandum calling on the Arab League to “sever economic and diplomatic relations with Bulgaria” following that country’s decision to pardon six medics whom Libya had sentenced to death for infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV.
The Arab League’s draft statement did not comment on Libya’s request.
Following yesterday’s meeting, a small group of Arab foreign ministers will travel to the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh to meet with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The US officials are expected to rally support for Bush’s proposed peace conference.
Moussa said Sunday that the conference should be sponsored by either the UN or the Quartet of Mideast mediators, made up of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia. Washington’s close Arab allies have welcomed the Bush proposal, but have stressed the importance of making the Arab peace initiative key to any talks.
Also yesterday, the Arab committee assigned to analyze the situation in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ military takeover of the territory held a meeting and issued a report on its activities.
The group, which includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan, was formed during an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on June 15.
The committee said in a statement that it was continuing its work “to achieve a decisive solution to the Palestinian crisis and to ensure the return of a normal situation to Gaza within the constitutional and legal framework.”
Meanwhile, Israel launched an air strike yesterday against a vehicle in the central Gaza Strip, wounding seven people, three of them fighters, medics said.
Israel’s military confirmed the airstrike, which it said was aimed at preventing rockets from being launched at Israel from Gaza. Israel has pressed on with its attacks on fighter targets in the coastal strip since Hamas seized the territory.
The vehicle struck by the Israeli missile near Mughazi refugee camp exploded on impact, wounding three fighters from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement and Islamic Jihad, medics and witnesses said.
Four Palestinian bystanders were treated for slight injuries, medics said.
Israeli soldiers killed two Al-Aqsa members on Saturday. Israel said they were planting explosives and preparing to launch mortars near the Gaza border fence.
An Al-Aqsa spokesman said then that the thwarted attack had been meant to send a signal the group objected to the omission of a reference to “armed struggle” in the new platform of Abbas’ government, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Abbas lost control of Gaza on June 14 when Hamas routed his secular Fatah forces, and responded by sacking a Hamas-led unity government, naming his own Western-backed administration.
Abbas’ government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, said on Friday it had dropped the “armed struggle” phrase, triggering protests from fighters based in Gaza. In an apparent response to these protests, Fayyad said yesterday that despite the platform’s wording, Palestinians still had a legitimate right to resist Israeli occupation of territories seized in the 1967 war.
Kingdom and Egypt Form
Panel for Consultation
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal and his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, yesterday signed in Cairo an agreement to form a committee for political consultation between the two countries.
The committee, which would be at the level of the foreign ministers of the two countries, will hold consultations and exchange views on various bilateral, regional and international issues.
The agreement also calls for holding annual meetings between the two sides besides meetings whenever necessary. The meetings shall be held in the capitals of the two countries alternately.
In remarks following the signing function, Prince Saud said the peace conference called for by President George Bush of the United States on the Palestinian issue needs to address main issues such as the borders, the right of return of the Palestinians and Jerusalem.
He said it must not just be a conference for formalities and photo sessions. He added that if the conference meets this view, effective participation in it would take place.
— With input from agencies
