Saudi crown prince's initiative and the Arab summit
Saudi Arabia-Regional, Politics, 2/26/2002

The Saudi daily al-Watan issued on Monday said that a high ranking Arab official who visited Paris and other European capitals have told European officials he had met the Syrian leadership and it has no reason to give any sort of opposition to the initiative proposed by the Saudi crown prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz.

The paper added, quoting well-informed Arab and European diplomatic sources that the initiative of the Saudi crown prince which calls for Israel's full withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories including Jerusalem, according to UN resolutions, for peace and the normalization of relations between the Arab states and Israel completely meet with the Syrian actual official stands, on liberating the occupied Arab territories and settling the conflict with Israel.

The paper indicated that the statements of the said Arab official came in the context of the Arab- European current consultations concerning the Arab stances towards this initiative.

According to the same sources, the paper added that the Arab official stressed during his talks with the European officials that the proposal of the Saudi crown prince is completely in compliance with the repeated declarations made by the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad on his readiness to establish complete peace for complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and also in complete compliance with the position of President Bashar al-Assad who is committed to the principle of land for peace and the UN resolutions in order to solve the conflict in calling for just and comprehensive peace for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories.

Al-Watan added that this high ranking Arab official, who was not identified by the paper, had expected that during the few coming days Arab consultations will be held with the Syrian leadership in order to adopt a formal official Arab position that backs the initiative of the Saudi crown prince in order to submit this proposal to the Arab summit and to adopt it.

The paper added that the said high ranking Arab official stressed during his talks with the Europeans on that what is needed from the US and the major states is to start from the initiative of the Saudi crown prince in order to draw a "practical mechanism" to implement this proposal through a series of steps and measures that are conducive to resuming the peace negotiations..

The paper explained that the current inter- Arab consultations have revealed that the majority of the Arab states so far support submitting the initiative of the Saudi crown prince to the Arab summit in Beirut by the end of March for adopting it.

Previous Stories:
  UN chief commends Saudi crown prince initiative   (2/25/2002)
  Fatah and the Saudi crown prince peace initiative with Israel   (2/23/2002)
  Arafat welcomes statements by Saudi crown prince on Israeli- Arab solution   (2/20/2002)
  Saudi Mufti calls for unifying Arab ranks   (2/19/2002)

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