El-Araby: No contacts with Syria

In an update on the Arab League’s attempts to mediate some of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts, Nabil El-Araby, secretary-general of the Arab League, said that his calls to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem have gone unanswered and that there is currently no contact between the League and the Syrian government.
The League, however, is in contact with the United Nations in an attempt to avert another major confrontation between the Israelis and Palestinians as Israel ignores international entreaties not to expand Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.
Focusing on Syria, El-Araby said that after three months, it is still too early to pass judgment on the mission undertaken by Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint international special envoy who is negotiating at the behest of the Arab League and the UN. Nevertheless, he pointed to Brahimi’s success in arranging a meeting between the US secretary of state and the Russain foreign minister in Geneva, in which the two sides discussed Syria.
El-Araby also expressed his agreement with a statement made by OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin ihsanoglu that “the Syrian regime has entered the phase of no return.” He pointed to an agreement reached at the Geneva meeting for the start of a transition phase in Syria aimed at forming a government recognized both internally and externally.
Also on the agenda for talks between El-Araby and ihsanoglu were the Palestinian issue, Islamophobia in the West and cooperation between Arab and Islamic groups at the UN.