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Hosni Mubarak, right, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, center second row, and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. (AP)
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| By israelinsider staff March 23, 2005 |
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| Not seeing eye to eye: Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi, left, Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, center, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, right, Iraq's President Ghazi al-Yawer, second left second row, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, center second row, and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, right second row, look around during the group picture of the 17th League of Arab States' summit in Algiers, Algeria, Tuesday, March 22, 2005. (AP) |
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Arab leaders said Tuesday that Israel cannot expect peace and normalized ties with the Arab world if it does not make concessions and give up "occupied lands."
The remarks opening a two-day Arab summit marked a clear shift away from a Jordanian proposal that Arab leaders rejected. In what would have been a dramatic change in Arabs' peace strategy, Jordan had suggested that Arab League members offer diplomatic ties to Israel before it returns occupied lands.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told the summit that Israel should not expect "the Arabs will make concessions and even normalize without anything real in return."
"This shouldn't be," he said. "It should be commitment for commitment. Then we can reach a balanced peace and close the issues of the conflict in order to establish relations in parallel with the withdrawal and the establishment of a Palestinian state."
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the summit host, said peace with Israel remains an "Arab strategic option." But he said it should be based on Israel returning all lands it "seized" in a 1967 Middle East war.
Only 13 heads of state from the league's 22 members attended the summit. Others stayed away either for health reasons or because of personal disputes with other members, sending lower-level officials in their place.
With a thin agenda, the summit was sidestepping glaring issues that have shaken the Arab world in recent months -- increased pressure for democratic reform, new optimism in the peace process, huge demonstrations in Lebanon and the withdrawal of Syrian troops there.
Instead the leaders were paying lip service to Syria's concerns about U.S. pressure and consider reform of the Arab League itself.
Jordan's King Abdullah II shook up the summit preparations with his peace initiative. When it was rejected, he did not attend. Jordan had argued that if Arab nations go ahead with normalization, it would prompt Israel to make major peace concessions.
A spokesman in Israel, which had praised Abdullah's initiative, called Moussa's stance "self-defeating."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the only way to solve Arab-Israeli difference is "through negotiations and dialogue. A position that says we will not talk to you until we solve all the problems is self defeating."
Moussa did not mention the Jordanian proposal, but dismissed the idea of normalization. "Israel is pressing to gain concessions without anything in return. It imagines that our rights will be forgotten and that the support and immunity it enjoys will allow it to continue in building settlements and erecting the imperialist wall and keeping the occupied territories -- or most of them," he said.
Moussa took a hard line going into the summit, insisting that Arab nations will not "move a millimeter" from the position that ties with Israel can come only after it hands over land.
Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen led the fight to reject the Jordanian proposal. The summit is expected to endorse a text reaffirming a Saudi peace initiative approved in 2002. That initiative said Arab states were prepared to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for its full withdrawal from occupied Arab territory, the creation of a Palestinian state and settlement of the Palestinian refugee issue.
Algeria's Bouteflika said it was crucially important that Palestinians get a state with Jerusalem as its capital and that they and other Arabs get back occupied lands. He also called for the 2002 Saudi peace initiative to be reactivated.
"Rousing the Arab world from its slumber depends on these two conditions," he said, drawing applause from summit participants.
Pressed by the United States to move toward democracy and combat Islamic terrorism, Arab leaders struck a defensive tone, saying that reform cannot be imposed from outside. Bouteflika said terrorism should be defined in a way "that everyone in the United Nations can agree on."
"This century has started with us in an unenviable defensive situation," Moussa said, calling for "different and daring collective action." He said Arab nations should support Iraqi stability and back Sudan in trying to end the Darfur crisis.
"Finally, there is Lebanon, to which our hearts go out during this critical stage its going through, and it's hoping for sincere and active Arab support," he said.
Syria has pulled back its troops in Lebanon eastward toward its border, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia have pressed it to remove its forces completely. U.S and United Nations pressure has increased on Syria to withdraw, and the country has been shaken by giant demonstrations demanding Syria end its long domination of Lebanon.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said leaders were expected to express support for Syria "in the face of American pressures."
But Syria's troop withdrawal was not on the summit agenda.
And despite pressure from Washington for democratic reform, the summit will largely avoid the issue. Instead, leaders are focusing on reforming the Arab League by endorsing a plan to set up an "Arab parliament" -- an unelected consultative body for the league.
The AP contributed to this report.
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