http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911313292558544.html
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
20:32 Mecca time, 17:32 GMT
Egypt rejects Arab summit call
Moussa said Arab foreign ministers will meet in Kuwait on
Friday [AFP]
Egypt has rejected a Qatari request to hold an emergency Arab League
summit in Doha on Friday to discuss the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
The Egyptian foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Cairo had told the
Arab League that the presence of Arab leaders in Kuwait on January 18 for an
economic summit "may pose an appropriate occasion for consultations among them
about the situation in Gaza".
Abdel-Alim al-Abyad, the Arab League spokesman, said Qatar made the
request for a summit on Monday and that two-thirds of the league's 22 members
needed to approve the request for the summit to take place.
Syria welcomed the idea and said it would attend. The Algerian state news
agency APS said Algeria also planned to attend.
Lebanon and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, also confirmed
their participation.
The 18-day-old Israeli offensive has exposed deep divisions between Arab
countries.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear a summit would produce little in the way of
results and would make Arab leaders appear ineffective, diplomats said.
Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general, said that Arab foreign
ministers would hold emergency talks in Kuwait on Friday to discuss "the
continuation of the Israeli aggression on Gaza" ahead of their scheduled
gathering.
Friday's meeting will "examine the developments relating to Israel's
refusal to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 1860" calling for an
immediate ceasefire in Gaza, he told reporters.
Truce chance
Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader, said on Tuesday there was
"still a chance" that his movement would accept an Egyptian ceasefire plan for
Gaza.
Abu Marzouk says there is still a chance Hamas will accept the
Egyptian plan [Reuters]
"There is still a chance that we will accept the Egyptian plan," provided
the "substantial reservations" of Hamas are taken into account, Abu Marzouk
told Al Jazeera.
A Hamas delegation is currently in Cairo to resume talks on the Egyptian
ceasefire plan.
Ayman Taha, a member of the Hamas delegation negotiating with Egypt's
intelligence chief in Cairo, denied information that it would reject the
Egyptian proposal in Tuesday's talks.
Salah al-Bardaweel, another Hamas delegate, said: "We are discussing the
Egyptian proposal away from the media and we will deprive the enemy of any
political achievement."
Slow progress
Mouin Rabbani, from the Institute of Palestine Studies, and contributing
editor to the Washington-based Middle East report, told Al Jazeera: "Quite a
bit of diplomacy is happening to quite little effect.
"We have the negotiations taking place in Cairo over a ceasefire
resolution but a lot of key issues remain unresolved.
"The key issues are that Hamas, from its point of view, is being asked to
raise the white flag as a condition to reach an agreement which is much more
detrimental to it than the ceasefire that it agreed to last year which wasn't
respected by Israel. So, at this point, there are key issues in the proposal
that [Hamas] cannot accept.
"Israel is insisting on conditions that not only Hamas is unwilling to
accept, but that Egypt is also unwilling to accept because it would further
impinge on Egypt's already limited sovereignty in the Sinai peninsula."
Ceasefire conditions
Hamas says Israel must pull back all its troops under a ceasefire and end
the blockade of the Gaza Strip that it tightened after the group seized the
coastal enclave from forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president,
in 2007.
Israel has rebuffed as "unworkable" a UN Security Council ceasefire
resolution last week and said a truce must ensure Hamas cannot re-arm through
tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border in an area known as the Philadelphi
corridor.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was heading to the region for a
week of talks with leaders in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria aimed at ending
the bloodshed.
"My message is simple, direct, and to the point: the fighting must stop.
To both sides, I say: Just stop now," Ban told reporters before his departure.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said in broadcast remarks that
Israel had "respectfully" heard Ban's appeal and was monitoring Egypt's
ceasefire mediation, but it would continue to hit Hamas while diplomatic
efforts were under way.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
