Arab FMs keep lid on talks on thorny issue of political reform
CAIRO, May 9 (AFP) — Arab foreign ministers turned their focus to the thorny issue of political reform, on the second day of closed-door talks aimed at preventing a repetition of the embarrassing collapse of an annual summit in March.
In preparation for the postponed summit, which is now tentatively scheduled to take place in late May at the original venue in Tunis, the ministers on Saturday discussed the Iraq and Arab-Israeli conflicts.
On the second day in the Egyptian capital, “the ministers are to debate reforms in the Arab world as well as internal reform in the Arab League,” Hisham Zaki, spokesman for Arab League chief Amr Mussa, told AFP.
Another official of the Cairo-based League, on condition of anonymity, said the secretariat of the 22-member organisation had drawn up a draft statement on “the Arab vision of internal reforms”.
The draft would combine proposals from several Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen.
The official also said that the “Greater Middle East Initiative”, which Washington is championing to bolster democracy in the region, was not on the agenda of the ministers’ meeting.
The United States says it wants to launch the scheme during a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations in June.
But several Arab countries, including US allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have criticised the initiative, fearing Washington wants to impose its own cultural models on the region.
Underlining the sensitivity of the Cairo talks, Tunisia’s Foreign Minister Habib Ben Yahia announced Saturday that the size of the delegations would be limited in a bid to preserve the confidentiality of the discussions.
The abrupt cancellation of the planned summit in Tunis in late March even as foreign ministers held preparatory talks was a fiasco for the Arab League.
In the aftermath, the bloc split down the middle over Egyptian proposals to switch the venue from Cairo, an offer which sparked howls of protest from Tunis.
The Cairo meeting was the fruit of a compromise brokered by the league’s secretariat under which Egypt would host the preparatory talks and Tunisia the actual summit, now slated for May 22-23.
“Our current meeting is a resumption of that held in Tunis in March,” Ben Yahia told ministers Saturday.
But Tunisia’s right to host the reconvened summit has been openly questioned in the Gulf despite the league chief’s announcement of an agreement on the rescheduling last month.
After the debacle in Tunis, many analysts pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia which announced in advance that its de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah would not attend the summit but be represented by Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
Saudi Arabia and Tunisia were reportedly at odds over an Arab League reform blueprint designed to meet the US-led demands for democratisation and economic liberalization across the region.
The ministers also discussed the abuse of prisoners held by US forces in Iraq and were preparing a strongly worded condemnation, according to Iraqi interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari.
“The draft resolution includes a clear condemnation in firm tones against the practices inflicted on Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation to which they were subjected,” he told reporters.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said the abuse highlighted the “double standards” of the United States which could no longer claim the moral high ground on human rights.
The minister denied widespread allegations of ethnic cleasning and even genocide in the war-ravaged western Sudanese region of Darfur, where government-backed Arab militias have been fighting non-Arab rebels.
US representatives to the United Nations walked out of a meeting in New York on Tuesday to protest the re-election of Sudan to the UN Commission on Human Rights.