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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Solidarity within bounds
By Dina EzzatWhen the Arab League decided to take the ordinary meeting of its foreign ministers meeting to Beirut to show its solidarity with Lebanon, the Lebanese people and government were pleased at the gesture. However, they never had anything but realistic expectations for the outcome of the meeting itself.
"It is all very nice that they decided to come and meet here, but it is what they agree on that is most important," one Lebanese journalist commented just before the opening of the meeting at the headquarters of the Lebanese cabinet. "So it would have been fine if they had met instead at the headquarters of the Arab League, and come up with really strong resolutions, rather than coming here and considering that their duty is done just by having the meeting in Beirut."
She was not alone in this view. Other Lebanese were talking about the delay in the Arab reaction to their country's "plight". "We have been suffering for a very long time and not getting any real support," commented one Lebanese waiter.
That support did come, however, with the Beirut meeting last Saturday. A decree was adopted by the foreign ministers declaring solidarity with Lebanon and supporting its right to resist the occupation of its territories. The decree also promised to look further into the question of financial aid.
"What we got is quite consistent with what we wanted," said Lebanese Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Selim El-Hoss. Yet, it is only a watered-down version of the proposals Lebanon had originally brought before the meeting.
Lebanon had wanted the Arab countries who are presently at peace with Israel to reconsider their position, should Israel continue its policy of aggression against Lebanese targets. This clause was slightly changed so as to exempt Egypt and Jordan, who are bound by international peace treaties with Israel.
Moreover, Lebanon was hoping to see progress on all fronts of Arab-Israeli normalisation, including the multi-lateral talks, made conditional on serious progress in the peace process. In the end, a rather less onerously conditional formula was approved. The Arab foreign ministers decided that Arab countries could reconsider the form that their normalisation with Israel takes, including the multilateral talks, if no "real and substantial" progress was achieved on all tracks of the peace process.
Meanwhile, the League meeting supported the Lebanese right to resist Israeli occupation, but without making any direct reference to the Islamic Hizbollah resistance movement.
"Still, I think that what came out of this Beirut meeting was very prudent," commented Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who headed Egypt's delegation to the Beirut meeting. "What we said in Lebanon is that if there is going to be aggression, there will be resistance; as for the issue of normalisation, it is very obvious that when the Arab peoples find the peace process slowing down, they slow down the pace of normalisation."
On the issue of financial support, Lebanon did not score very high either. The Lebanese had wanted the ministerial resolution to pledge two billion US dollars of Arab aid for the reconstruction of infrastructure damaged by the Israeli aggression. The Gulf states, who are expected to pick up the biggest chunk of this bill, refused to have a figure included in the resolution. They decided that each country should agree individually with the Lebanese government on both the pace and terms of payment.
Compromise was also the name of the game when it came to the other crucial item on the agenda of the one-day Beirut meeting: the Arab summit. Yemen and the general secretariat of the Arab League had presented the meeting with two proposals suggesting the institutionalisation of the annual convocation of the Arab summit. Neither of them was passed.
The meeting of the Arab foreign ministers decided instead that a ministerial committee should meet to deliberate on the format in which the annual convention of the summit could be organised, and should bring its proposals to the next ordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers in September. The committee is composed of the foreign ministers of Oman (who chaired this session of the Arab council for foreign ministers), Yemen, Egypt (the current chair of the Arab summit), Syria and Tunisia.
The report of this committee would then be referred to a ministerial meeting called by Egypt to decide on the mechanisms for its implementation. This meeting, in which Iraq would participate both at its own request and at Egypt's insistence, would submit recommendations to the next Arab summit, whenever it may be held.
"I think that things are moving towards the convention of the summit," Moussa said. "The question of when the summit would be held remains to be examined."
So, at least some degree of Arab consensus was achieved. It remains, however, an open question whether this consensus will lead to the kind of close inter-Arab coordination that was originally hoped for from this Beirut meeting itself.
