CAIRO, June 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa criticized a raft of proposed U.S. steps to stop what it calls "terrorists" from entering the United States as discriminatory against Arabs.

"These are discriminatory measures against the citizens of Arab and Islamic countries," Mussa told Agence France-Presse (AFP), vowing the 22-member pan-Arab organization would convene to study the matter.

The new plan, which was announced by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Wednesday, June 5, 2000, said that the U.S. government was planning to fingerprint, photograph and register all foreign visitors from “specific countries”.

Ashcroft said that individual visitors deemed to fall into categories of "elevated national security concern" would be required to submit to a three-part immigration exercise, or risk arrest, AFP reported.

The nationalities, which will be targeted, will be of countries that the U.S. considers as so-called “sponsors of terrorism.” Critics of this new plan are worried that this plan will be racially profiling visitors to the U.S., the New York Times reported.

Such visitors will be fingerprinted and photographed at the border, be required to register "periodically" if they stay in the United States for 30 days or longer, and be subjected to exit controls.

Mussa emphasized the measures have also raised concern within the United States, as decreased civil liberties in the wake of new measures are feared.

The Arab League also urged Saturday, June 8, 2002, the United Nations to provide international protection for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after more than 20 months of violence.

It "demanded the Security Council furnish international protection for the Palestinian people," in a statement released after a meeting of representatives to the Arab League headquarters in Cairo.

Meanwhile, Ashcroft’s new rules for registering foreigners visiting the United States were considered by many another major bureaucratic shift.

The new National Security Entry/Exit Registration System, which was response to a mandate from Congress to track "virtually all" of the 35 million foreign visitors who land in the United States annually before 2005, would track approximately 100,000 visitors in the first year, Ashcroft said.

The new system was announced just a week after the Justice Department presented new rules allowing federal agents greater freedom to conduct surveillance activities within U.S. borders, AFP said.