Maher: Sharm El-Sheikh summit tackled Arab action within Beirut resolutions
Egypt-Regional, Politics, 5/15/2002

The Egyptian-Saudi-Syrian summit held recently in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh tackled the mechanisms for Arab action within the Beirut Arab summit resolutions, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said Tuesday.

He added that the summit was held to stress the Arabs' inalienable objectives and continue joint action with other Arab countries.

In an interview with the Egyptian TV, aired today at Good Morning Egypt, programme, Maher said the summit is aimed at the first place to protect the Palestinian people that were and are still subject to attempts to erase their identity and efforts to achieve independence.

A second objective was to move on the basis of the peace initiative, he said, noting the leaders wanted to see the outcome of contacts that took place on the initiative tabled by Saudi Arabia to the Beirut summit.

Comparing the U.S. administration's stance in its early days in power to its current stance, one would see that it wants to make its moves after it has been watching from afar, he said.

We sometimes sense a positive development in the U.S. stance; for instance when the United States opposes the Israeli Likud's decision not to allow establishment of a Palestinian state, this indicates the bias the United States used to show in favour of Israel is changing, said Maher.

He expressed belief that the Israeli pro-peace powers started to be active in Israel as a result of Egyptian and Arab stances.

The foreign minister pinpointed that the U.S. stress on Palestinian statehood is a positive drive which came in response to the Egyptian and Arab stances, noting the Israeli Likud Party has no competence or powers to determine this and therefore these decisions are worthless.

On the church of the Nativity agreement, Maher said the Israeli conditions were to have Palestinians handed to them and the Palestinian stance was totally rejecting this.

Israel wanted to flush out Palestinians for good from the lands of Palestine and what happened was that 13 Palestinians accepted temporary sacrifice to leave the Palestinian territories for some time, elaborated Maher, adding the rest returned to Gaza.

The circumstances prompted an agreement but the important thing was that Arab and Palestinian objectives to end the siege imposed on Palsetinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Church are met, Maher said.

On Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir's visit to Cairo Wednesday, Maher said that "there is no schedules set for the Sudanese brothers' visit to Egypt. They are welcome any time."

The agenda for this visit will dwell on three key issues: bilateral relations, Egyptian-Libyan efforts to realise peace there and the situation in the Middle East region, said Maher.

Previous Stories:
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