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Arab nations to attend U.S.-backed peace conference |
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Written by News Editor
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Saturday, 24 November 2007 |
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CAIRO, Egypt -- Arab countries reluctantly agreed Friday to attend next week's U.S.-sponsored Middle East conference in Annapolis, Md., a scaled-down meeting for which there are scaled-down expectations.
Arab foreign ministers made the announcement in Cairo, where the Arab League is holding talks on member nations' conditions for nudging forward peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
Saudi Arabia eventually agreed to attend, but its foreign minister said he wouldn't tolerate "theatrics" such as handshakes and photo opportunities with Israeli officials.
"I'm not hiding any secret about the Saudi position. We were reluctant until today," Princeton-educated Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal told a news conference in Cairo. "But the kingdom would never stand against an Arab consensus, as long as the Arab position has agreed on attending. The kingdom will walk along with its brothers in one line."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arranged the conference, scheduled for Tuesday at the Naval Academy, to bring together Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and hammer out a joint resolution to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. After intense discussions late Thursday and Friday, Arab League members agreed the meeting should be attended by a committee set up earlier this year to deal with the peace process -- Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.
However Syria, an ally of Iran, did not commit to the conference. It has stated that it would only go if Israel's return of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war, was specifically addressed.
By late Friday it seemed that Syria was leaning toward attending. Syrian media quoted Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem as saying that the U.S. agreed to add the Golan Heights to the agenda.
In Arab newspapers, talk shows and college campuses, there's little optimism about the conference. Arab media noted that Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have remained stagnant for seven years and that there's still no resolution in sight for fiercely debated issues such as the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes in what's now Israel and the land that Israel would cede to a Palestinian state.
This report includes material from The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times. |
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