Issue No. 612
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14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Clear and present danger
Grappling with the imminent challenges they face, Arab countries have become more pragmatic than ever. Dina Ezzat reports
Arab foreign ministers were in Cairo this week to attend an extraordinary council session that set out to examine "the serious threats facing the Arab world" and to decide on how best to deal with them. The meeting on Sunday came a few weeks after the regular session of the Council of Foreign Ministers last September and was preceded by several preparatory meetings on Friday and Saturday.
The gathering was prompted by a Libyan motion last month to withdraw from the Arab League. Since it was suspended upon an agreement between Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, the Libyan request for withdrawal was not discussed at the meetings. In response to Gaddafi's complaints, nevertheless, the discussions focussed on how the Arabs could better deal with the challenges facing them at present.
Among the challenges is the new right-wing Israeli government that is threatening more violence against the Palestinians, Iraq facing a new UN resolution that contains enough ambiguities to enable the US to find a pretext to launch war and stumbling peace efforts in Sudan.
Al-Ahram Weekly has learned that in his statements addressed to the closed session of the ministerial meeting, Moussa told participating ministers that "the threats facing the Arab order now target its geographic and institutional set up, as well as its cultural and religious norms and tenets." Moussa's statements, which were not made public, included some serious remarks on the attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause, to attack Iraq and to divide Sudan. According to Moussa, it was Gaddafi's view that Arab states are not taking adequate action to face up to these threats, which is what prompted the Libyan motion.
The ministers' mission was to agree on a plan of action that would reflect a sense of Arab solidarity so as to encourage the Libyan leader to reconsider his move, in addition to providing support to the concerned states and to Arab strategic interests at large. "The threats are aimed at all of us. It might be this or that country first, but then other countries will be targeted somehow," commented Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud, the current chair of the Arab summit.
Sources close to the meetings say the discussions were serious and down to earth with not much, if any, of the usual squabbles. There was consensus that the overall Arab performance leaves much room for improvement. Pragmatism and realism were agreed upon as modes for future action.
Hence, Syria, the current Arab member in the Security Council, was not criticised by anyone -- not even by Iraq -- for voting in favour of the recent council resolution on Iraq. "We explained to the Arab countries, and to Iraq, that we have written guarantees from the US that resolution 1441 will not be used to launch military action against Iraq," Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al- Sharaa said in a press conference. "It would have been easy for us to abstain and receive public praise for doing so, but then we would have no way of influencing the leanings in the Security Council on Iraq. But now we are working from within the council to include Arab experts on the team of international inspectors to be sent to Iraq."
The meetings resulted in a resolution being issued that encourages Iraq to spare itself and the entire region the dire consequences of war. "We are calling upon our brothers in Iraq not to be provoked by anything or anyone," Al-Sharaa said. Other Arab foreign ministers actually hinted that Baghdad will shortly be declaring its acceptance of the UN resolution.
For his part, Iraqi Foreign Minister Nagi Sabri did not criticise anyone, not even the Syrians, for putting Iraq down. During the opening session, Sabri shook the hand of Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassim warmly, despite the fact that Qatar has allowed US troops to be stationed in the country, in preparation for war on Iraq.
"Arabs know what they have to do. They know that the plans to attack Iraq are a part of larger plans to attack Arab strategic interests. It is not just Iraq that is faced with serious threats. It is the entire Arab world," Sabri said.
On the question of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there was not much of the usual bickering between Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. A united Arab administration of the political moves of the different tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict is still far from being a reality. However, there was a sense that coordination among the concerned countries has to be stepped up. And while Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian minister for international coordination, did not say that the Palestinian Authority (PA) would not make a decision on the proposed US road map towards peace without an agreement from all concerned Arab states, he did say that the PA will take into consideration the views expressed by Arab states on the matter. "The Arab Peace Initiative Committee will meet later this month to discuss the road map and we will see where we are going next," Shaath said.
Sunday's meetings provided room for serious discussion on a potential emergency Arab summit proposed by both Qatar and Libya. "The secretariat of the Arab League has asked member states to forward opinions on this issue to see if it would be possible to hold an Arab summit sometime before the beginning of next year, because by then, we would be close to the date of the regular summit scheduled to take place in March in Bahrain,"
Moussa told reporters.
More importantly, most Arab ministers meeting on Sunday had the courage to admit that the blame that has recently been placed at the doorstep of the Arab League for the Arabs' poor reaction to serious crises was not the doing of the secretariat but the fault of the collective political will of the member states. Libyan Foreign Minister Ali Al-Trikki said his country's attempt to walk out of the Arab League was not in protest over the league's performance, but over the lack of Arab solidarity. "Our view is that what is the point for a country to be a member of a grouping if it was going to get attacked and none of the members of this grouping would do anything to support it? We were told that this is going to change and we hope it will," Al-Trikki told reporters.
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