Iraq asks for postponing summit, Lebanon agrees under conditions
Regional-Iraq, Politics, 2/24/2003

Iraq on Sunday asked for the postponement of the Arab summit until the mid of March because of the preoccupation of the Iraqi officials with the next session of the UN Security Council, while Lebanon has set a precondition of the summit's commitment to the recent resolutions of the recent Arab Beirut summit and those of the recent meeting of the Arab foreign ministers.

Some 16 members of the Arab League (AL) member states out of 22 agreed to convene an ordinary Arab summit on March 1st in Egypt.

An official at the AL indicated that the other 6 Arab League members ( who have not yet given their answer to the summit ) will give their reply quickly concerning the summit.

The AL official said that the ordinary Arab summit which will concentrate on the Iraqi crisis and the situation in the Palestinian territories, will be initially held in Sharm Esh Sheikh resort on the Red Sea. It will be preceded on Thursday on February 27th by a preliminary meeting of the Arab foreign ministers. The AL did not clarify the reason behind transferring the summit to Sharm Esh Sheikh.

However, news reports said that the Egyptian authorities asked for transferring the summit from Cairo for security reasons to that the headquarters of the AL being in the downtown of Cairo can not accommodate this large number of Arab leaders and members of the accompanying delegations.

Meantime, Iraq has officially asked the AL yesterday to postpone the summit for two weeks. An Arab diplomatic source said that "Iraq fears that the Arab states will place pressure on it for new concessions." The source in the Iraqi mission said that the mission submitted an official request to the AL to postpone the summit until after March 14, the date when the UN inspectors will submit a new report on their missions in Iraq to the UN.

The Iraqi memorandum to the AL said that Iraq asks for the postponement because of the "preoccupation of the Iraqi officials in preparing reports which will be submitted to the UN inspections teams" and dealing with matters needed to be dealt with between Iraq and the UN.

Previous Stories:
  Kuwait, Qatar refuse commitment over their lands not to be used militarily   (2/22/2003)
  Mubarak: summit to consider delegation to Iraq; Syria: joint Arab defense needed   (2/22/2003)
  France-Africa summit: here's an alternative to war in Iraq   (2/21/2003)

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