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Arab League Warns Sharon To Tread Carefully
by Tareq Ayyoub
AMMAN, Feb 10 (IslamOnline) - Arab foreign ministers on Saturday started a two-day meeting in the Jordanian capital to prepare for the upcoming Arab summit, scheduled to be held in Amman next month.
The eight foreign ministers representing Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Jordan, will also discuss ways to extend support to the Palestinian people, who launched an uprising against Israeli occupation on September 28th after a controversial visit by current hardline Israeli prime minister-elect Ariel Sharon to the al-Aqsa mosque complex.
The meeting came four days after the February 6th elections in Israel, which brought Sharon to power and to the helm of future Israeli policy.
Sharon's previous anti-Arab stands and actions, coupled with his notorious military record as a former army general, has cast doubts on the new Israeli leader's desire to pursue peace making with the Palestine National Authority.
Following his election, Shoraon said that Israel would not give concessions on the issues of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland.
In an interview with IslamOnline on Saturday, the Secretary General of the Arab League, Esmat Abdul Maguid, warned Sharon from adopting a hardline policy and said that such a stance would attract confrontation from Arabs and Palestinians.
Abdul Maguid said that Arabs are ready to continue the peace process if Sharon agrees to resume peace talks. But he stressed that he is not optimistic about Sharon's intentions and plans.
"I am not optimistic about Sharon, but I think we have to be very careful and watch his behavior. If he remains the same - Sharon before he was elected - then there is no hope for peace.
"If he changes his policies, then we are ready to move ahead with peaceful solutions," Abdul Maguid told IslamOnline in an interview ahead of the eight-party meeting.
"I hope Sharon and others will understand this," Abdul Magiud added.
"If the policy he will follow" is the same he that he followed when he was out of office, then this policy "will fail and will force more resistance to him.
"I do not think that in the Arab world we are afraid of Sharon and his policy because he has proved failure when he attacked Lebanon and any force he uses will strengthen the resistance of the Palestinians," he added.
Abdul Maguid, who arrived in Amman late Friday to chair the Follow Up Committee, which includes the foreign ministers of the eight countries, said the two-day conference would also discuss the upcoming Arab summit which will be held in Jordan on March 27th.
He indicated that the meeting would discuss ways to ensure that financial resources promised by some Arab countries to support the five-month-old Palestinian Intifada would be guaranteed to the Palestinian people.
"It is something very much needed because their [has] been some delay in forwarding necessary support for our Palestinian brothers. I hope that we can expedite this in the actual meeting in Amman," Abdul Maguid added.
The foreign ministers will also discuss during meetings other ways to support Palestinians in their Intifada, the Arab League official added
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mousa said that Sharon should refrain from his "extreme" policy or he will endanger the whole region.
"Sharon is known [for] his extreme policies and if he continues in this policy, then the situation will be very serious and it will draw a reaction from other parties," Mousa told reporters before the foreign ministers meeting. "We have to wait and see, but our wait will not be for long," the minister added.
During the opening session, Palestine Liberation Organization official Lutfi Qadoumi ruled out the possibility that Sharon could "invade" Palestinian self-rule areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
"The elections of Ariel Sharon proves that Israeli public opinion has not grown to accept the comprehensive peace," Qadoumi told the ministers.
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