UAE closes Zayed center because it promotes anti Semitism
United Arab Emirates-Israel, Politics, 8/18/2003

A United Arab Emirates UAE official in Dubai said yesterday that the United Arab Emirates decided to close "Zayed's international center for coordination and follow up" which was established in 1999 at a decision of the Arab league in order to enhance common Arab action.

The UAE official added "we have decided to close the Zayed center and stop its financing," noting that the final decision to this effect goes back to the Arab League, the main sponsor of the center. The UAE had vowed to host and finance the center since its foundation.

The UAE official added that the UAE "has expressed implicitly its concern over certain statements issued in recent months and activities organized by the center." But he did not define these activities or its contents.

However, several articles criticizing the center were published accusing it of anti Semitism and anti US and of hosting research promoting for the theory of the conspiracy against the Arabs. One of them was the teacher at Cairo university Muhammad Ahmad Hussein who said in an intervention on the center that "the Jews, through their media machine, used the Holocaust to implant hatred against non Jews and cover crimes committed by the Israelis."

The center also hosted the French writer Terry Maison who published his famous book about September 11 incidents under the title "the big lie" in which he accuses American army officers of taking part in planning for the attacks.

The decision coincided with a campaign aimed not only at the center, but the UAE president Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan, which the center bears his name and described as one of Israel's first critics, and that it gives a material support to the Palestinian question.

On the other hand, Arab intellectuals dispatched a memorandum of solidarity with Zayed center in which they condemned the Israeli campaigns to close the center and called for it continuing its activity "in its being a minaret to defending Arab causes." The memorandum called on Sheikh Zayed and the chairman of the center Sheikh Sultan Bin Zayed as well as the secretary general of the Arab League Amr Mousa to continue supporting the activities of the center.

Previous Stories:
  Yediot Ahronot: An Israeli delegation for Dubai in September   (8/14/2003)
  UAE President calls for end of Israeli terrorism   (10/11/2001)
  UAE anti normalization committee   (5/8/2001)

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