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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Palmyra talks
TODAY in Palmyra, Syria, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, his Saudi counterpart Saud Al-Faisal and their host Farouk Al-Sharaa are meeting again in an effort to map out future Arab action on the peace process and inter-Arab relations. Dina Ezzat reports"An Arab summit will certainly be subject to discussion but it would not be completely accurate to say that this is a preparatory meeting for an overall Arab summit," commented an Arab diplomatic source.
Before leaving to Palmyra yesterday, Moussa said: "For the summit to happen we need to have the consensus of all Arab countries. We [in Egypt] believe that the sooner the summit the better. We also believe that the decision to hold a summit should not be tied to any non-Arab factors."
Moussa, Al-Sharaa and Al-Faisal will also decide on a tentative date for Cairo to host a ministerial meeting of the Damascus Declaration that brings together Egypt, Syria and the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This meeting, already 18 months overdue, is expected to take place during the last week of this month.
Trial begins
THE LONG-awaited trial of two Libyans accused of killing 270 people in the 1988 PanAm airliner bombing over Lockerbie opened yesterday in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, with the defence counsel pointing the finger at Palestinian groups.Lawyers for Abdel-Basset Al-Megrahi and Lamine Khalifa Fahima blamed the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the little-known Palestinian Popular Struggle Front and 10 individuals of masterminding the bombing.
After the two suspects pleaded not guilty, the trial had to adjourn for technical reasons, with a sound system fault preventing some members of the court from hearing the proceedings, Reuters reported.
In an interview with Sky Television aired before the trial began, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi dismissed as "absurd" a suggestion that the suspects had acted under his direct orders.
The rally, like others in Tehran and in a number of universities across Iran, remained confined to the campus and ended peacefully, Reuters reported. The hard-line judge of Tehran's press court has, meanwhile, warned Khatami's brother to curb his pro-reform newspaper Mosharekat, criticising both its content and format.
