Foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will hold a special meeting in Jeddah today to discuss key regional issues with special reference to the high-profile Islamic summit to be convened in Makkah on Tuesday.
“The meeting will also focus on the problems and challenges facing the Islamic world,” said Ahmed Al-Kabi, a GCC spokesman, here yesterday.
Al-Kabi said that the GCC foreign ministers’ meeting is important in view of the war in Syria and more recently the deadly violence in Myanmar. The Islamic world led by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and especially the Gulf states, have voiced deep concern time and again over the state-sponsored killings of innocent people in Syria and Myanmar.
“The GCC ministers will talk about this fourth emergency Islamic summit, which will be another milestone in achieving unity and solidarity of the Islamic world, especially in the backdrop of the potential challenges facing it and the role of the GCC countries,” said another GCC official, who preferred to remain anonymous.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has invited OIC heads of state, kings and leaders to the summit with an aim to strengthen unity among Islamic countries.
The aim is also to boost cooperation, put an end to division, in addition to addressing major problems and crises facing the Islamic nation. The bloody crackdown on civilians in Syria and the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are the two grave issues facing the Islamic world today, and hence these two figure high on the agenda of the summit, said the GCC official, adding that this extraordinary meeting of GCC foreign ministers was likely to discuss several other topics too.
He said the GCC foreign ministers will possibly discuss the agenda of the Islamic summit, the deteriorating situation in Syria, the plan to transform the GCC into a GCC Union and also the Palestine issue. Many other unresolved issues in the context of Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco may also be discussed by the ministers.
“But the focus will be more on Islamic summit,” said the official, adding that the ministers will examine situations in many countries of the Islamic world.
The foreign ministers will also try to work out mechanism to intensify efforts to confront the situations, address the sources of discord and division therein, reunify the Islamic Ummah and promote Islamic solidarity, said the GCC official. Another meeting of the GCC foreign ministers is scheduled for September, which will discuss the outcome of the Islamic summit. The September meeting will focus in detail the study that was conducted by a joint GCC panel to transform the Gulf bloc into a Gulf Union.
