Canceling Arab League delegation visit to Baghdad

News reports in Cairo said that the committee assigned by the ordinary Arab summit in Sharm Esh Sheikh to make efforts at the UN and Iraq canceled a visit to Baghdad that was due today.

The news reports added that the work of this committee was frozen after Syria and Lebanon apologized for its membership because of the media statements made in particular by the Gulf states that the aim of the committee is to call on the Iraqi President to step down.

Certain sources attributed the cancellation of this visit and freezing the activities of this committee to differences in view points and Washington's negative position concerning this committee which is headed by the Arab League (AL) Secretary General Amr Moussa.

The Iraqi mission at the Arab League announced that Baghdad apologized for not being able to receive the Arab Ministerial committee because of what it called "developments in Iraq relating to the perpetuated American aggression against it." Immediately after receiving the Iraqi memorandum, the AL chief Amr Moussa announced the cancellation of the two visits by the committee to Manama, Bahrain, on Thursday and to Baghdad.

The committee which includes the foreign ministers of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Tunisia met in New York with the foreign ministers of several states and UN officials who took part in the meeting of the UN Security Council last Friday on Iraq.

Well-informed sources at the AL said that the US President George Bush refused to meet with members of the committee, noting that the US administration considered it useless to make unsuccessful discussions.

The AL has announced that the committee was seeking to avoid the eruption of war against Iraq and actual implementation of UN resolution no. 1441.