A rchive Date
[ 07-04-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Egypt ]
|
[http://canoe.ca/CNEWSTopNews/arab_apr6-ap.html
Arab ministers meet in Cairo
Saturday April 6, 2002
CAIRO (AP) - Arab foreign ministers gathered here Saturday to discuss ways of increasing their response to Israel's military offensive on the West Bank amid calls from Iraq and Iran to use oil as a weapon. The Arab League ministerial meeting comes after a week of daily protests against Israel and the United States, the like of which the Arab world has rarely seen.
Jordanian demonstrators beat up riot police and sent them packing in Amman on Saturday while Bahraini protesters set fire to structures in the U.S. Embassy in Manama.
Iraq's leading newspaper, Babil, called Saturday for the ministers to recognize the gravity of the situation in the Palestinian territories, where Israeli troops have taken control of six towns and cities, and "adopt the Iraqi proposal to use oil as a weapon." Babil, which is owned by the son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said Saturday's meeting was a tardy response to the mass protests that have been taking place in Arab capitals since the Israeli offensive began on March 29.
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came out Friday in support of the Iraqi oil proposal. "I suggest, only for one month, as a symbolic gesture, that Arab and Islamic countries switch off oil to all countries who have close relations with Israel," Khamenei said in a Friday prayers sermon in Tehran.
Two other oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have spoken out against using oil as an instrument of foreign policy. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal, who held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak early Saturday, was quoted this week as saying it makes no sense for Arabs to cut off their oil supplies as their oil facilities would be the No. 1 target of any enemy attack.
However, support for a cutback came from a newspaper in a fifth oil producer, the United Arab Emirates, on Saturday.
"The time has come to stop talking and start action ... Time now to reflect upon the success of the oil embargo of 1973... So it is time to use it again. Then, perhaps, the international community will once again listen to the voices of the Arab peoples," said an editorial in the English-language Gulf News.
As the foreign ministers took their places in the Arab League conference room, about 20 people demonstrated outside the League building in central Cairo, most wearing the checkered Arab headdress identified with Palestinians.
One protester, Hussein el-Masry, said the ministers had to take a "more positive" stand on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis by "boycotting (Israel) and expelling Israeli ambassadors in all Arab countries. That is the least" they can do.
Three league members, Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, have diplomatic relations with Israel.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|