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The
summit begins
Mubarak advises
Arafat to stay away from the Arab Summit, and decides not to attend
himself.
By Tarek Atia
(cairolive.com, March
27, 2002)
It had been hinted
at in the lead up to today's Arab Summit in Beirut. Al-Wafd had featured
a front page item on Sunday headlined "Mubarak might not attend the
Arab summit."
Al-Jazeera, the controversial Qatari satellite channel, had been
broadcasting the same news on Sunday and Monday -- to the extent that
Al-Akhbar's editor, Galal Dweidar, skewered the channel in his Tuesday
front page column, claiming Al-Jazeera had no basis for the report,
sarcastically saying that they were getting their information from sweet
potato sellers.
But then on Tuesday, in Beirut, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher
announced that Mubarak would not be coming to Beirut because of pressing
domestic concerns at home. Al-Wafd, of course, made sure to headline its
Wednesday edition with the boast that they had been the first to predict
the news.
But Mubarak was certainly not the only Arab leader not attending the
important Beirut meeting. A tiny item on Al-Akhbar's front page
indicates that a total of 12 Arab leaders decided not to attend --
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Oman, Iraq, Libya, Sudan,
Mauritania, Qatar, Comoros and Palestine. All are sending lower level representation to
the conference, which is set to discuss a Saudi peace proposal making
big headlines around the world.
In Egypt's case, Prime Minister Atef Ebeid is attending instead of Mubarak.
The Egyptian president, however, was still there in spirit, giving two interviews on Tuesday to Lebanese media establishments, one to
Al-Nahar
newspaper and the other to LBC, a Lebanese satellite channel. Amongst
the issues discussed by Mubarak during the interviews was whether or not
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
should attend. Arguing that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might
take advantage of Arafat's
departure to hit Palestinian infrastructure hard, and then prevent the
Palestinian leader from returning home, Mubarak advised Arafat against
going to Beirut, and Arafat seems to have taken the advice to heart.
Will he instead address the gathering via video
feed from Ramallah, as Mubarak suggested?
Mubarak also said the Saudi
peace proposal -- which was expected to be ratified by the summit and
thus turned into an overall Arab peace offering, was a final chance for
Israel to make peace with the Arabs. The Egyptian leader, however, was
not optimistic that Sharon's government would take the steps necessary
for peace.
Meanwhile, Wednesday's Al-Wafd also features an item on its front page quoting
a top US military intelligence official as saying that the intense
pressure on the region generated by both the US's war on terror and the deteriorating
situation in Palestine meant that there was a serious
possibility of the region breaking out into all out war -- and that this
would be especially tough on those countries who were allied with the
United States.
Related
stories:
A summit
like no other?
Al-Jazeera
selling
sweet potatoes?
Setting
the Beirut agenda
Deciding
what to do
Friedman's
peace plan
Moussa's
message to Sharon
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here to browse the complete dispatch archives
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