28 March - 3 April 2002
Issue No.579
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 March - 3 April 2002 Issue No.579 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
photo: AFP
Arafat broadcast blocked
The Arab summit in Beirut sank into acrimony when Yasser Arafat's televised speech to delegates was prevented by the chairman, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud
With 13 out of 22 Arab heads of state absent, including Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, the two-day Arab summit conference in Beirut got off to a discouraging start yesterday. The situation went from bad to worse, though as Al-Ahram Weekly went to print there was some muted optimism that it just might get better before the summit ends its deliberations later today with the issuing of the Beirut Declaration and a number of resolutions on key Arab issues.
The major crisis occurred during the first working session of the summit when Lebanon's president and summit chairman, Emile Lahoud, prevented Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from addressing the summit via satellite link from his Israeli-besieged headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. In anger, the Palestinian delegation walked out.
"We walked out of this conference after President Lahoud ignored the repeated request of the Palestinian delegation to get the speech of President Arafat on air [at the summit]," senior Palestinian delegate, Nabil Shaath, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The whole summit, for a time, appeared on the verge of collapse. The Saudis were initially rumoured to have walked out in support of the Palestinian position. Headed by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz, the Saudi delegation is the uncontested star of the Beirut summit, the main achievement of which will be to endorse the crown prince's "peace initiative," offering full normalisation of Arab relations with Israel in return for full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land and providing a fair settlement for the plight of Palestinian refugees. A Saudi withdrawal would have been tantamount to the summit's breakdown.
Later, however, the Saudis, while demanding a Lebanese apology to the Palestinians, said they would remain. The United Arab Emirates, represented at the summit by Vice-President Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid, downgraded its representation in solidarity with the Palestinian walkout. The EAU vice-president immediately departed from the Lebanese capital, leaving Foreign Minister Rashid bin Abdullah Al- Nuaimi to head his country's delegation.
It remained uncertain, however, whether the Palestinian delegation's pullout of the summit was final. Delegation members were, at time of printing, still at Beirut's Phoenicia Hotel, where the conference delegates are housed, while intensive efforts by Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri and other Arab delegates were underway to convince them to remain.
"We are nearing an agreement on the language of the Saudi initiative and we are nearing an agreement on language concerning Iraq-Kuwait relations; so I hope that the Palestinians will return to the conference; we want this conference to be successful," Egypt's Foreign Minister, Ahmed Maher, told the Weekly. A similar sentiment was expressed by Shaath. "We want the situation to be remedied; we want the summit to succeed and we still support the Saudi initiative," he said. Delegation chief, Farouq Qadoumi, however, was quoted by AFP as expressing his thanks to all the intermediaries who had tried to reverse the Palestinian delegation's decision to withdraw from the summit, but stressed that it was "finished."
In his speech, aired by the Qatari satellite television station Al-Jazeera and intended to be simultaneously broadcast to the summit, Arafat welcomed the Saudi initiative.
"In the name of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership, I would assert here our welcoming of the courageous initiative which was declared by Crown Prince Abdullah regarding a peaceful solution to the Palestinian- Israeli conflict," Arafat said. "This initiative, God willing, will turn this summit into an Arab initiative for a peace of the brave between us and the Israeli people and Jews in the world."
While the Lebanese were insisting that Lahoud's decision to prevent the televising of Arafat's speech before the summit was merely an organisational mistake, the fracas seemed to underline the tensions that continue to divide Arab ranks in spite of the seemingly consensual backing of the Saudi initiative, with one group of Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, emphasising a message of peace and normalisation, while another, led by Syria, seeks to stress the importance of revitalising of the Arab boycott of Israel and providing greater support for the Palestinian Intifada.
During the preparatory meetings for the summit considerable effort was expended on ironing out a Declaration language that would meet the minimum requirements of the two camps.
Nonetheless, the Saudi initiative is expected to win unanimous support when the summit concludes today.
And while no Arab leader has expressed optimism regarding Israel's response to their endorsement of the Saudi initiative, transforming it into a pan-Arab peace offer, they seem to believe that it puts the ball in Israel's court. According to Secretary-General Amr Moussa, the Beirut summit "relates to the future of the entire region: either justice, peace and progress or total chaos and escalating confrontations with consequences nobody can predict."
Reported from Beirut by Dina Ezzat and Nevine Khalil
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page