UAE's intensive contacts on Walt Disney issue
United Arab Emirates-Regional, Politics, 9/13/1999

United Arab Emirates Minister of Information and Culture Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan has made intensive contacts with the ministers of culture in the Arab and Islamic states in order to study means of pressuring the Walt Disney Company not to exhibit an Israeli pavilion in which occupied Jerusalem is shown as the capital of Israel.

In a statement to the UAE news agency, the UAE minister said the Arab and Islamic states are thinking of taking measures against the company in case it does not agree to permit representatives of Arab and Islamic societies in the US to visit the exhibition before its inauguration at the end of the current month and to make sure that this Israeli stand does not include anything that distorts the holy city's Arab and Muslim history.

Sheikh Abdullah called for mobilizing efforts by the ministers of culture in the Arab and Muslim states and their cooperation in order to convince the company of the dangers that might result from this issue concerning its interests in the Arab and Islamic world.

The UAE minister stressed that his country will ban the sale of all the company's products if it proceeds in organizing this exposition.

Earlier, Sheikh Abdullah sent messages to Arab League Secretary General Esmat Abdul Meguid, and the director general of the Arab League Education and Culture Organization (ALECSO), Othman Abdul Aziz al-Tweijari, in which he urged them to move to stop the Israeli plan which he said aims to destroy the cultural heritage of the holy city.

Sheikh Abdullah also called for circulating the message to the Arab ministers of culture and regional and international organizations and establishments to foil this Israeli plan.

Meanwhile, US Arab organizations are making intensive contacts to stop the Israeli plans which campaign for expansionist ideas through the Walt Disney exposition.

A regional boycott of Disney would inflect heavy losses on the company's sales in the Middle East.

Officials at Disney said that its sales in the Gulf alone, where half of the population is under the age of 15, will reach US $500 million, by the year 2005.

Previous Stories:
  Arab states call on AL to confront Disney exhibition   (9/11/1999)
  Walt Disney says its exposition is cultural   (9/11/1999)
  Morocco is not sponsor of pavilion at Disney World exhibition   (9/10/1999)

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