Discussions between al-Shara, Arafat

The Kuwaiti daily al-Rai al-Am said in its Wednesday's issue according to a well- informed Syrian source that a discussion was made between the Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Shara and Yasser Arafat in the close - door meetings at the Jerusalem committee which was held in Morocco when al-Shara proposed to adopt what was stated in Arafat's speech concerning the city of Jerusalem. Arafat made that speech at the inaugural session of the meetings and al-Shara's proposed to adopt this speech as a base for the final statement, but Arafat retreated under the pretext that his speech was only for the media.

In its Wednesday's issue, according to the well-informed Syrian source the paper added that following the recent camp David summit, Arafat made a long tour with the aim to keep himself away from the flared anger resulted from the conditional and secret meeting over the question of Jerusalem and in order to ensure an Arab and Islamic cover for his concessions. And when Syria refused to meet with him his hopes went to have the Arab and Islamic stand as means to justify these concessions.

The sources told the paper that Iran as well Syria surprised Arafat who proposed while visiting Iran the convening of an Islamic summit on the hope he will receive " cool response," but Iran as well as Syria surprised him by approving with enthusiasm, on their belief that such a summit will restrict him and prevent him from implementing the concessions. Then Arafat escaped this matter ( of convening an Islamic summit) and proposed another alternative which is to convene an Arab summit under his belief that Syria will oppose this summit, but the surprise for him was that Syria welcomed the Arab summit and he had only to close this issue.