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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Palestine International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Travel Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A spanner in the works
By Dina Ezzat
In spite of legislation, the practice of employing children has continued. To increase awareness of the importance of applying the law and its impact on Egyptian exports, the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) recently held a seminar on this issue. The ministerial meeting comes less than 48 hours after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi poured cold water on the upcoming summit. Gaddafi told Qatar's Al-Jazira satellite channel on Tuesday evening that the summit should be scrapped because it will fail to meet the expectations of the Arab people on issues relating to support of the Palestinian Intifada. Appearing on the programme "The Opposite Side," Gaddafi read out to a large TV audience the rough draft of the communiqué prepared for adoption and release by the Arab summit when it concludes its work on Sunday. The draft did not include any clear-cut commitment by Arab leaders to immediately scale down diplomatic and economic relations with Israel in protest against its aggression on the unarmed Palestinian civilian population.
In Cairo, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa expressed dismay that Gaddafi "broke the established diplomatic norms that prohibit any country from publicly disclosing the contents of any draft agreement or communiqué before the convocation of meetings for which those drafts are prepared."
Another problem that the Arab ministerial meeting will have to deal with is the angry public reaction throughout the Arab world to the limited results that came out of the Sharm Al-Sheikh summit.
The failure of this summit to get the Israeli government to sign an agreement to stop its "excessive use of force" against Palestinians make it incumbent upon the Arab foreign ministers to come out with constructive proposals that their leaders could adopt at their summit in support of the Palestinian Intifada. "We were hoping that the Sharm Al-Sheikh meeting would have had more conclusive results," said one Cairo-based Arab diplomat.
Iraq is another issue on which Arab foreign ministers will have to deliberate. It is not clear yet how the Arab summit will deal with the Iraqi file. Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have made it explicitly clear that the upcoming summit should exclude the issue of Iraq. Surprisingly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohamed Said Al-Sahhaf went along.
"This summit is supposed to be devoted entirely to ways of supporting the Intifada. There is no need for us to take up questions that will only divert attention from the focal issue."
The only non-controversial item on the agenda of the Arab foreign ministers meeting is perhaps that of the establishment of a mechanism for the regular annual convocation of an Arab summit.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said, "The adoption of a mechanism for convening the summit regularly is the best guarantee of dealing with all accumulated Arab problems."
