|
|
| By: Associated Press |
| Published: May 16, 2006 |
| |
An Arab League committee called Monday for greater efforts to block trade with Israel, but fewer than two-thirds of the Arab states attended the talks on a boycott that has largely run out of steam.
Arab states "need to tighten the boycott as a way to express our rejection of aggression, and to force Israel to implement U.N. resolutions," said the boycott office's commissioner general, Mohammed al-Tayyeb Bouslaa of Tunisia, referring to Security Council resolutions that call on Israel to withdraw from land captured in the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973.
Fourteen of the League's 22 nations were represented at the meeting, a four-day event that is held twice a year at the boycott office's headquarters in Damascus.
Among the absentees were Egypt and Jordan, which have signed peace treaties with Israel, Mauritania, which has diplomatic relations with Israel, Bahrain and Oman.
The League set up the boycott office in 1951 to put pressure on foreign companies that do business with Israel, trying to force them to choose between trading with the Jewish state and the much larger Arab market.
In the early days, several big Western corporations such as Coca Cola and Ford were blacklisted, but the boycott dwindled substantially after Egypt signed peace with Israel in 1979.
However, after the Palestinian uprising revived in 2000, the League made an attempt to resuscitate the boycott. |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
