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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Arabs adopt
By Khaled Dawoud
reconciliatory agendaFor weeks before the opening of the Arab League's foreign ministers' meeting last Wednesday, Arab diplomats had been fearing a repetition of an earlier gathering in January when the Iraqi delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Mohamed Said Al-Sahhaf, walked out.
And it was a fear that was well-founded, given the almost daily US and British strikes against the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, and bitter accusations and threats from Baghdad against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for allowing US bombers to use their bases to launch the attacks.
Furthermore, the Iraqi delegation's agenda for the foreign ministers' regular biannual session added to fears of a further split in Arab ranks. Al-Sahhaf proposed adding two items to the meeting's agenda: condemnation of the attacks and agreement that the no-fly zones had been unilaterally imposed by the US and were not part of UN Security Council resolutions passed against Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait; and the discussion of the fate of those "missing in action" since the 1991 Gulf War.
Using the word "missing" was an attempt by Baghdad to confirm its claim that it does not hold any Kuwaiti prisoners of war (POWs). Kuwait, which rejects Baghdad's claim, has been organising international campaigns calling for the release of up to 600 Kuwaitis allegedly held in Iraqi prisons. Iraq claims that in the chaos that followed the end of the Gulf War, many people, including 1,150 Iraqi civilians and top-ranking officers, went missing. Baghdad claims that the alleged Kuwaiti POWs are most likely among those who went missing.
For key US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, it was out of the question for them to "condemn" the world's superpower and the country which they see as the main guarantor of their security. Also unacceptable to them was the Iraqi position on the issue of the POWs. Thus, for the first time in the League's 54-year history, the Arab foreign ministers failed to approve the agenda of the meeting in their closed session. An Arab diplomat who attended the meeting told Al-Ahram Weekly that heated exchanges took place between Sahhaf, on the one hand, and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal and Kuwait's State Minister for Foreign Affairs Abdel-Aziz Al-Dekheil, on the other. However, the same diplomat noted that Al-Sahhaf was keen in his interventions to avoid "inflammatory language", unlike the 24 January meeting.
The experienced Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel-Meguid adjourned the meeting to allow for mediation behind closed doors. The foreign ministers of Egypt, Syria, Qatar and Oman and the Moroccan minister of state, who headed his country's delegation, were involved in overnight negotiations between Iraq and the Saudi and Kuwaiti delegations to reach a formula that would satisfy all parties.
On Thursday morning, Algeria's ambassador to the Arab League broke the news to dozens of reporters who were puzzling over the possible outcome of the meeting. "We succeeded, Al-hamdu lillah [thanks be to God]. We reached a conciliatory formula," he said.
The compromise announced a few hours later by Abdel-Meguid was that Iraq agreed to drop its two proposed items for the agenda in return for adding two paragraphs to the report issued by the Arab League secretary-general on the session. The report is considered part of the official documents issued by the meeting. The ministers agreed to refer to the issue of the prisoners or "missing" as a "humanitarian problem between Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia." The paragraph approved by the ministers asked Abdel-Meguid to set up a mechanism in coordination with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) which would help solve this problem. The ICRC has been investigating the issue of Kuwaiti POWs for some years.
Regarding the US-British strikes and the no-fly zones, the ministers called for "stopping all acts carried out against Iraq outside the framework of Security Council resolutions." This vague sentence left the door open for all parties to be satisfied. The word "condemnation" was not used, and the US and Britain were not referred to by name. From now on, it is up to each country to decide what acts constitute a violation of the Security Council resolutions passed against Iraq.
Informed Arab sources said that the Iraqi delegation accepted the so-called "conciliatory formulas" in return for pledges from key Arab countries that they will follow up on their effort to calm the tension between Iraq and its neighbours in order to put more pressure on the US to stop its attacks. Many Arab observers saw President Hosni Mubarak's visit to Kuwait on Saturday in this light, but no immediate outcome is expected due to the deep mistrust by Gulf leaders towards Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
