Call for healing ‘Arab rifts’

Arab leaders opened their annual summit in Doha yesterday amid calls for healing inter-Arab rifts, rejecting the ICC arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, taking a joint stance on the Palestinian issue as well as an Arab action plan to deal with the global financial crisis.
HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who presided over the meeting, called for setting up a “mechanism for managing differences among Arab states”.
“Our internal disputes urge us to reach at least a mechanism to manage our differences so that differences do not jeopardise closer relations,” the Emir said.
The Emir also welcomed the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz who launched an initiative to bridge inter-Arab differences at the Arab economic summit held in Kuwait in January.
“We all have one goal which is the interest of our people and our nation and raising its status,” the Emir added.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who handed over the presidency of the Arab League to Qatar, opened the session with a speech calling for unity among Arab states.
He hit out at Israel, saying “there is no peace partner for Arabs in Israel”.
“Peace for the Israelis is only a tactical option which aims at covering their long-term goals based on not returning any of the rights they usurped from us,” he said.
The Syrian president lambasted the warrant issued against al-Bashir, as a “prelude to reintroducing colonialism in a more modernised form”.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa called for setting up a collective security system in the Middle East, which he said, should exclude Israel until it ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and end the Arab Israeli conflict.
“About the Arab solidarity, he said Arab states should be able to manage their “differences” without allowing them to reach to the “clash and bickering stages”.
Bashir, who attended the summit defying the arrest warrant, defended his action and also urged support for the Palestinians as well as the reconciliation efforts in Somalia.
Al-Bashir also hit out at the UN Security Council, the body that mandated the ICC prosecutor to investigate the situation in Darfur.
Other Arab leaders also stressed the need for unity and closer relations among the Arab countries.
The meeting was attended also by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Jean Ping, chairperson of the commission of the African Union.

Original Article from: Gulf Times