Damascus eight stress restoration of Arab rights imperative

Foreign ministers of the eight-nation Damascus Declaration alliance ended a biannual meeting on June 26 after failing again to forge a regional military pact.

But they denounced Turkey's rapidly developing military ties with Israel and voiced support for an Arab common market.

The two-day meeting was seen a show of solidarity with Syria, whose peace negotiations with Israel have been stalled since February 1996 and who feels most threatened by the Jewish state's military links with Turkey.

The Arabs fear the Israel-Turkey alliance will boost Israel's military strength at a time when the peace process floundering.

As expected, the final communique condemned the month-old Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq, which Ankara says is needed to root out Kurdish separatist rebels based there.

Turkey also came under fire for its plans to stage naval exercises with the

UN this summer in the eastern Mediterranean.

The delegates said they do not accept the military agreements between Turkey and Israel "because it represents a danger to the Arabs and Middle East and it is against the Islamic front. We call on Turkey, a member of the Islamic front, to take care in its dealings with Israel and resume contacts with its Arab neighbors," the statement said.

Still, the ministers were unable to agree on a Saudi-proposed security protocol which seeks to confront collectively any aggression against a member state.

The communique made the standard calls for closer Arab political and economic ties. But to avoid an open split in their ranks, the ministers did not take any position on a controversial US-supported regional economic conference in Qatar in November that is supposed to build bridges between the Arabs and Israel.

The issue has opened a split in the six-year-old alliance between staunch US allies Qatar and Egypt and other six --Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

At a news conference after the meeting, Syrian foreign minister al-Sharaa made it clear that Damascus remains firmly opposed to any attempt to forge ties between Israel and Arab states while the peace process remains deadlocked.

Sharaa said Arabs should abide by a resolution adopted at an Arab summit last summer in Egypt that progress must first be made on the peace front before rewarding Israel with economic relations.

A source said Qatar, which has aggressively sought favor in Washington, lobbied delegates to allow the Doha conference to go ahead as planned because it has a commitment to those countries which have said they will attend, including Israel, despite criticism from Arab states, namely Syria.

Damascus urges that Israel under Netanyahu's government should not be rewarded while its hard-line position has halted the peace process.

Damascus boycotted the previous summits Casablanca in 1994, Amman in 1995 and Cairo last year.

Egypt meanwhile, found itself in a difficult position. Cairo "does not want to anger the United States by coming out against the summit at a time when congress is reconsidering its economic aid grants," one diplomat said. "On the other hand, it doesn't want to be seen to be abandoning the Arab cause."

On June 25, Egyptian foreign minister Amer Moussa took a middle-of-the-road approach, saying "there's still time" before the Arabs have to decide about the Doha meeting.

But the diplomat said a number of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, now support the Syrian position because they "don't agree with the US opinion that economic links will strengthen the peace process. We want economic co-operation to be the fruit of political progress."

There were also no results from the alliance's much touted goal of forging a free trade agreement that is supposed to lead to an European Union style Arab common market. Sheikh Jamil al-Hujailan, the GCC secretary general said, "Syria and Egypt must send representatives to the Gulf" to see progress achieved there on economic cooperation before any agreement can be signed.

On the long-running territorial dispute between the United Arab Emirates and Iran the statement called on Tehran to return three small Gulf islands claimed by the federation.