Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo Wednesday demanded that Washington stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons, but admitted their special summit to boost the Palestinians had ended in disappointment, according to AFP.
The Arab League ministers said in a statement that they would make the demand to the US administration, and also urged other measures to pressure Israel to end nearly 11 months of aggression in the Occupied Territories.
The foreign ministers notably agreed to try and reactivate a boycott of Israeli products that some estimates suggest could cost the country $3 billion per year.
The foreign ministers also called on Arab countries to "not initiate contacts with Israel," but still authorized Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries to sign peace treaties with Israel, to continue their links, said the agency.
However, AFP said, it was a mild result after earlier calls by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in a special meeting with the ministers to get major nations to threaten Israel with economic and political sanctions.
Arafat had also said ahead of the meeting that he hoped Washington would use its special relationship with Israel to pressure it into halting its "aggression" against the Palestinians.
"We don't want to give people false hope, the resolutions are not effective and firm, but it's only one step," Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jaber Al Thani, who presided over the debates, later told a press conference.
He also urged all Arab countries to attend a special boycott meeting in Damascus between October 7 and 11.
Arab officials were quoted by the agency as saying that the proceedings, which stretched over 10 hours, with a three-hour break, were marked by persistent disagreements among the members over which direction to take in support of the Palestinians.
One diplomatic source told the agency that some unnamed Arab countries had rejected the proposal to halt all economic and political relations with the Jewish state, despite strong support from Syria.
Other countries said that their contacts with Israel were justified in the framework in bringing about a peace settlement, the source said, which is the position often taken by Egypt.
Haaretz and agencies said that the meeting was dominated by a dispute between Egypt and Syria over the severity of the measures that should be taken against Israel.
"One cannot expect miracles ... but let me say there are practical, positive decisions that can be implemented," Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath told reporters in Cairo even before the summit got underway. "(The) distance between the Arab dictum and the Arab execution on the ground has to be reduced," he said.
Arafat also called during the first session for an "international initiative of the UN Security Council," which is meeting for the first time on the Middle East since March 27, when the United States vetoed a resolution to send international observers to the Palestinian territories.
Arafat, who later left for India to start a mini-Asian tour, also chided the ministers for the lukewarm support their countries had provided so far.
"Two Arab summits since the September 28 beginning of the Palestinian uprising have not had any tangible result except for financial commitments which have only been partially honored," he said.
And, while no details were available, diplomats at the meeting said Iraq had called for yet another summit to urgently examine the Middle East situation.
Earlier, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri also asked for the Arab world to back Baghdad in pressing the United Nations to approve its initiative to provide 1 billion euros ($920 million) in aid to the Palestinians.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced the offer last December, with the money to come from Iraq's supervised UN oil-for-food program.
The United Nations has never given permission for such allocations, said the agency.
Following his remarks, Arafat left Cairo to start a mini-tour of Asian countries that will take him to India, Pakistan and China. He was to arrive in New Delhi later Thursday on the first round of that trip.
Arab leaders have been criticized, at times by their own people, for not taking solid action to support the Intifada uprising.
Despite the Arabs', and particularly Palestinians', repeated calls on the US to pressure Israel to stop its aggressive policies, the Jewish state has so far won almost all its battles on that front.
The oft-repeated Israeli stance is that no foreign power should interfere with its efforts to quell the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of military occupation of land conquered in 1967, and settled with tens of thousands of Israelis in defiance of international law and the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
This rejection of outside interference has extended to rejecting Palestinians’ repeated appeals for international ceasefire monitors, which this week succeeded thanks to rigid US support in the UN Security Council.
In fact, the US has showed little sign of wavering in its support for Israel, and, according to CNN, in January signed a memorandum of understanding with the Jewish state to increase military aid by $60 million, reaching $2.4 billion by 2008.
Israel spends the majority of the aid money on products from the U.S. defense industry, an Israeli official told CNN at the time.
An Oct. 27, 2000 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, using available and verifiable numbers, gives cumulative US aid to Israel from 1949 through FY 2000 at $81.38 billion.
This aid, as well as US diplomatic support in the form of actual or threatened vetoes in the UN Security Council, may have something to do with the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
Fortune magazine in May once again ranked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee among the top five in its annual Power 25 survey of premier lobbying groups. AIPAC, according to the mass-circulation business magazine, is the number one foreign policy lobby for the fourth consecutive year.
AIPAC's job is to shape opinion favorable to Israel," said Toby Dershowitz, an organization spokesperson, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. "Its main goal is enhancing US-Israeli relations." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
