Libya decides to withdraw from the Arab League
Libya-Regional, Politics, 10/25/2002

Libya yesterday renewed its determination to withdraw its membership from the Arab League (AL) as an expression of its discontent with the general Arab condition. This new Libyan decision pushed the AL secretary general Amr Mousa to cut an official visit to Portugal and head for Tripoli to convince its leadership to give up the decision.

Despite the fact that Libya had repeatedly indicated its desire to withdraw from the Arab League, however, the timing of this decision was surprising.

An official source at the African unity affairs in Tripoli said that "Libya's permanent representative to the AL in Cairo Abdul Menem al-Houni handed over a memorandum to this effect to ambassador Hisham Bader, the director of the AL's chief office." The source continued that Libya stressed in the memorandum its " determination to withdraw from the AL" without explaining reasons behind that.

In Cairo, the Spokesman for the Arab league AL Hesham Youssef said that "the AL received an official memorandum notifying its desire to withdraw from the AL." He added that "The AL chief Amr Moussa was notified about the memorandum before he left Portugal in his way back to Cairo." Youssef said that Moussa made contacts with high ranking Libyan officials following this development; hoping "to be able to convince Libya to give up this decision." The Egyptian foreign minister Ahmad Maher said he had received a telephone call yesterday from his Libyan counterpart Ali Abdul Salaam al-Tureiki telling him that Libya proposed for that request as an expression of " its discontent towards the general Arab condition."

Sources at the AL said that Mousa will head for Libya within hours in an attempt to make Tripoli change its new position. Moussa had visited Libya in an attempt to calm down the anger of the Libyan leader Al Qathafi who said in the celebration of September 1st of the Libyan revolution that he feels ashamed to be an Arab while the Arab leaders are doing nothing to confronting the Israeli oppressive policy against the Palestinian at the support of the US.

For many times Al Qathafi threatened to pull out from the AL. The last time he did so was in March before convening the Arab summit in Beirut. Then, he criticized the initiative of the Saudi crown prince Abdullah Bin Abd Al Aziz for peace on the ME. This initiative was approved at Beirut's summit. Al Qathafi also protested against the negligence of the AL to the peace initiative he had one year earlier submitted at the Amman's Arab summit conference.

Previous Stories:
  Qathafi's White book for solving the Palestinian question   (9/2/2002)
  Al-Qaddafi renews call for creating the IsraTeen country   (7/24/2002)
  Libya's people's committee did not discuss pullout from Arab League   (6/8/2002)
  Al-Qaddafi ridicules Arab armies and calls for sacking them   (4/2/2002)

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