Moussa heads for Tunisia to settle hosting the Arab league

News reports in Cairo quoted sources close to the Arab League as saying that Tunisia might be once again wishing to host the Arab summit after a period of hesitation.

According to the same sources, the secretary general of the Arab League will be heading for Tunisia at the invitation of the Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The visit will deliberately decide if Tunisia will accept or not hosting the summit.

The director of Moussa's office Hesham Youssef said that Tunisia has not taken a decision yet on hosting the summit which is due in March.

The spokesman for the AL secretary general Husam Zaki said that Moussa will hold during this "urgent visit" talks with Ben Ali on the place and date of convening the summit.

A source at the Arab League said that Moussa will seek to get a "final decision" concerning the venue of convening the summit.

The summit, however, is supposed to be held in Tunisia. The mechanism of rotating hosting of the summit states that it is to be held at the headquarters of the AL ( Egypt), unless it is hosted by the country which assumed the rotating presidency of the Arab summit.

However, an Arab source quoted the Tunisian foreign minister al-Habib Bin Yahya after his participation on January 29th in Cairo in a meeting with Moussa as saying that his country will host the summit if "it guarantees its success, and will not host it if fears continue of having differences at this summit, the same as happened in the recent Arab summit of Sharm Esh Sheikh."

Sharm Esh Sheikh Summit which was held in March 2003, 20 days before the invasion of Iraq witnesses differences on the Arab position concerning the war which was then nearby.

Following the meeting, Bin Yahya said that his country "will decide its position regarding hosting the summit shortly." He added that the priority is to discuss the issues listed on the meeting's agenda instead of the venue of holding the summit.

Arab officials who visited Cairo recently loomed that the Arab summit might not be held in Tunisia. The Yemeni foreign minister Abu Baker Abdullah al-Qurabi said on Monday that the next Arab summit might be held in Cairo.

Tunisia assumes the rotating presidency of the Arab summit in March in succession of Bahrain which presided over it since the Sharm Esh Sheikh summit in March 2003. The AL council assumes presidency according to alphabetical order of names of the Arab states.