Mubarak confirms attending the Arab summit in Tunisia
Egypt-Regional, Politics, 5/20/2004

The Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said yesterday he will be attending the Arab summit which will be held in Tunisia on Saturday. He told journalists in the Al-Aqser city that his attending of the summit is very important because it will discuss hot issues like questions pertaining to Palestine and Iraq and the issue of boosting the Arab league and reforms.

The Egyptian President stressed the need of convening the summit even if certain Arab leaders apologize to attending it, noting that not in all summits all presidents attend..

Mubarak said that most of the Arab leaders who will be absent from the summit have certain conditions. He said that the summit will issue resolutions but the important thing is to implement them.

On the Iraqi issue, the Egyptian President considered that what he called terrorism will be spread in Iraq if the American occupation forces will withdraw by the fall of the authority transfer on June 30.

Mubarak said that the withdrawal will be a grave mistake because the US will leave a country without an army or police or ministries. He also considered that in this case Iraq will be converted into a center of terrorist operations. On Monday Bahrain announced that the King of Bahrain Hamad Bin Issa al-Khaleifa will not attend the summit and that the delegation of Bahrain will be presided over by the prime minister Sheikh Khaleifa Bin Salman al-Khaleifa.

Earlier, Yemen announced that its prime minister will represent it in the summit. Arab diplomats said that this will be an expression of the anger over the decision of Tunisia to postpone the summit which was due in March this year.

Previous Stories:
  Mubarak on the upcoming Arab summit   (5/14/2004)
  Mubarak calls for honoring the Iraqis: The summit will set a strategy for reforms   (5/6/2004)
  Shehab: Our institutions based on democracy, freedom of expression   (4/21/2004)

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