JEDDAH, 26 February 2004 — Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said yesterday that the wall being built by Israel in the West Bank will make any peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict extremely difficult.
“This wall not only isolates the Palestinians, but blocks any peaceful initiatives intent on a solution to the Mideast conflict,” the minister told reporters.
Prince Saud also said the wall “imposes a new reality on the ground which will complicate matters further and add new burdens to the fundamental issues in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
Referring to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s talks in Riyadh with Saudi leaders, the foreign minister said the two countries had agreed to present a joint paper to the Arab summit in Tunis on improving the Arab situation.
“We hope the summit would be successful in tackling major issues like Palestine, Iraq and internal Arab reforms and set out plans for an Arab renaissance,” the prince said. The summit will also discuss proposals to bring about reforms in the Arab League.
He said Saudi Arabia and Egypt rejected foreign imposed reforms as “the future of the Arab region is totally an Arab matter and it must be determined by Arab people alone.”
“Imposition of any situation on the region’s countries is unacceptable,” the minister said when asked whether he knew about US plans to encourage democratic reforms in the Middle East.
“Arab countries carry out reforms in the interest of their people and protect their rights. Dictating terms in any area will not be considered friendly,” the Saudi minister said.
But a US official said yesterday that Washington believed that democratic reforms in the Middle East must be “home-grown” and that Arab rulers share its goal of economic and social progress.
“I would broadly say that we all agree that the impetus for reforms has to come from the region. It has to be home-grown,” said US Undersecretary of Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs Alan Larson.
Prince Saud said an Arab League committee will meet in Cairo next week to discuss ways to reactivate the Arab peace plan and the Middle East road map. He also emphasized the Palestinians’ right to return to their homeland. “It is one of the basic points of the Arab peace plan,” he added.
He said the GCC foreign ministers meeting in Riyadh on Saturday would discuss proposals to improve the Arab situation, adding that the six-member regional alliance would take a joint stand on the issue.
Prince Saud said he had agreed with a team from Iraq’s US-appointed interim Governing Council on the need to hand over power to Iraqis on the June 30 target date. “There was a concurrence of views on the importance of safeguarding Iraq’s unity and transferring power on the agreed date,” he said.
The delegation, led by current council president Mohsen Abdul Hamid, had explained the situation in Iraq as well as their efforts to achieve stability in the violence-ridden country, he said.
The Iraqi team, which also includes council member Ghazi Al-Yawar who spent 15 years in Saudi Arabia, arrived in Riyadh late yesterday. The delegation met Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard.
