Al-Ahram Weekly | Region

		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 14 - 20 December 2000 Issue No.512
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Expediting solidarity
MEMBERS of the Arab summit's follow-up committee ended a two-day meeting in Damascus on Monday. The foreign ministers of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Bahrain, Tunisia, as well as officials from Saudi Arabia and Morocco, pledged to intensify cooperation to fulfil obligations made at the October Cairo Arab summit.
In a statement read out by Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, participants at the meeting promised full support and solidarity with the Palestinian people and denounced recent Israeli threats targeting Syria and Lebanon, describing them as an "aggression against the entire Arab nation."
Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel-Meguid said the meeting came up with recommendations which would not be disclosed, saying that among the issues discussed were ways to accelerate financial pledges made at the October summit.
Palestinian officials have been complaining, during recent weeks, that funds allotted to assist the Palestinians were coming in slowly.
Leaders at the Cairo summit, the first in four years, had established two funds -- one worth $200 million to aid the families of Palestinians killed in the recent violence and another worth $800 million to "preserve the Arab and Muslim character of Jerusalem."
Moussa said the foreign ministers would meet in Tunisia next month and in Jordan in March, where the next Arab summit is scheduled to be held.

FIS seeks dialogue
THE HEAD of Algeria's disbanded Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Anwar Haddam, has said that he wanted to build bridges with the Algerian authorities to reach a peaceful solution to the country's crisis.
"We are going to do all we can to establish a dialogue with the authorities in order to find a peaceful, global and permanent solution to the Algerian crisis," Haddam, who was released this week after four years in detention in the US, told the Qatari satellite television channel Al-Jazira on Friday.
Violence broke out in Algeria in 1992 after the military stepped in to deny certain electoral victory by the FIS, claiming more than 100,000 lives.
Haddam said the FIS was going to continue its action aimed at enabling the Algerian people to choose their political authority.
In the early nineties, Haddam was known as a FIS fundamentalist, with close links to Algeria's most violent Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Towards the end of 1995, he pulled out of the movement, but remained a terrorist in the eyes of Algerian authorities.
Haddam had been detained in Virginia since December 1996 by the US immigration services because he did not have a visa. He was refused asylum in the US after it had been granted to him "by mistake," the immigration services said at the time.

Demonstrations sweep Morocco
MOROCCAN police on Sunday violently dispersed thousands of supporters of the Islamic Justice and Charity Movement holding a banned protest in front of the nation's parliament. According to reports, Moroccan police beat demonstrators with billy clubs and took hundreds in for questioning.
Islamist leader and head of the movement Abdel-Salam Yassine had called the protest in Rabat against the government's banning of its publications and other measures to keep the fundamentalist movement in check. Yassine's movement has grown increasingly vocal since King Mohammed VI took the throne following the death of his father, King Hassan II, in July 1999.
The late king had imposed many measures to rein in the country's fundamentalist movement, including placing Yassine under house arrest and banning his organisation. The government lifted Yassine's 11-year house arrest in May.
Similar demonstrations took place in Casablanca, Fez and other cities. The protest's organisers said many people had been injured and more than 700 detained, but police did not release figures.
It was the second banned protest in front of the Moroccan parliament this weekend. On Saturday, during a peaceful protest by about 30 people marking the 52nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, authorities took about 10 human rights demonstrators in for questioning, beating several who resisted arrest.
French ambiguity blasted
IRAQ has blasted France, one of its closest allies in the UN Security Council, for what it called "ambiguous" French policy towards Baghdad.
In a front-page editorial, the ruling Baath Party's Al-Thawra newspaper said France has failed to distance itself from US positions on Iraq.
"In spite of what is said about its sympathy for Iraq, the French attitude is still marked by ambiguity," the paper said. "France has failed to express its independence from American policy." Al-Thawra also said Paris has "left the Americans alone to deal with the [Middle East] peace talks and impose their conditions on Arab negotiators."
"France has also not condemned the daily Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people," added the paper.
Despite its frequent support of Iraq, Baghdad criticised France most recently for calling on Iraq to allow weapons inspectors back into the country as a precondition for lifting UN sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Compiled by Rasha Saad

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