Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah (R) during his meeting with Mubarak on Tuesday

RIYADH, February 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Two Arab and Muslim heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Egypt spurned on Tuesday, February 24, reform plans "imposed on Arab and Islamic countries from outside", in apparent reference to the U.S.-floated "Greater Middle East Initiative".

The two countries’ leaders stressed that "Arab states do not accept that a particular pattern of reform be imposed on Arab and Islamic countries from outside," read a joint statement issued after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s talks with Saudi King Fahd Bin Abdel Aziz and Crown Prince Abdullah.

"Arab states proceed on the path of development, modernization and reform in keeping with their people's interests and values," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted the statement as saying.

The joint statement underlined that modernization and reform, however, "must also fulfill their people's needs and be compatible with their specificities and Arab identity."

Washington plans to launch its Greater Middle East Initiative at a summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in June.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said his administration was considering a major initiative aimed at encouraging democratic reforms in the greater Middle East and looking for ways to "institutionalize" such a project.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney spoke of the same initiative last month in the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

"Our forward strategy for freedom commits us to support those who work and sacrifice for reform across the greater Middle East," he said.

Just Solutions

But Mubarak and his Saudi hosts stressed in their statement that achieving Middle East stability "requires finding just solutions to the causes of the Arab and Islamic nation, chiefly the Palestinian cause and the Iraq issue".

The two sides called for "political talks on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks" of the moribund Middle East peace process that would be conducive to a comprehensive settlement with Israel.

They saw eye to eye on the need to "activate the Arab peace initiative" proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah and adopted at the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, added the statement.

The Saudi-inspired initiative offers Israel normal ties with the Arab world in return for the withdrawal of its occupation forces from all Arab territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

In their joint statement, Riyadh and Cairo also pressed for a greater U.N. role in Iraq to help set the stage for "the withdrawal of [U.S.-led] occupation forces as soon as possible".

The two countries also forged a joint stand on "rectifying the Arab situation" that they would put to an Arab foreign ministers' meeting to be hosted by Cairo on March 3-4.

While on a visit to Brussels, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal rejected Thursday, February 19, the American initiative, saying reform could not be forced on peoples via any new document.

High On Arab Agenda

Though Egypt and Saudi Arabia rebuffed the U.S. initiative, it would still top the agenda of the upcoming Arab summit, to be held next month in Tunis.

"The initiative and ideas will certainly be on the agenda of the summit," Hisham Youssef, the director of the office of Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, told AFP.

The different proposals from the U.S. and the E.U. will be "evaluated" by leaders of the 22-member pan-Arab organization, said Youssef, referring to the transatlantic initiative to foster democracy in the Middle East put forward earlier in the month by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

Arab states could welcome the plans "if they are consulted on and included in" the drafting process, but "any initiative or idea imported and proposed from outside without consultations .... will not succeed", Youssef warned.

It would be unacceptable to "speak of any initiative or vision which ignores or relegates the Palestinian cause" and to "discuss security questions without speaking of Israeli [undeclared] weapons of mass destruction", added the Arab official.

He noted that reform projects were raised when Mubarak made a visit to Turkey last week and then on a trip to Gulf Arab countries earlier last week.

They were also discussed between Moussa and several Arab officials, said Youssef, citing a "dialogue with the United States" about the initiative but not in a " formal framework".

Colonialism

Journalists and editorialists in Cairo said the Western initiatives amounted to a return to the colonial period.

Salama Ahmad Salama, editorialist at the mass-circulation Al-Ahram, wrote that they aim to "divert attention from Israeli actions" against the Palestinians and the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

"Arab governments do not seem to have the right to discuss such plans, which seek to put the region under American-European authority," he said.

The U.S. democracy initiative "does not mention at all the problem of peace or the means to counter Israeli hegemony," Salama said.

In a commentary in the English language Al-Ahram Weekly, Salahudin Hafez, the secretary general of the Arab Journalists Union, warned Arabs "against going back to the starting point and falling into the hands of imperialism in a new guise".

"There is no difference between what was said by the French, British, Belgian and Dutch colonizers of the past centuries and what the modern colonial empires are saying," he wrote.

"All say they want to teach us democracy and progress," Hafez said, adding that Arabs made the task easier with "their corruption and authoritarian regimes".

Turkish journalists said that the U.S. administration gave Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light during his visit to Washington in January to promote the initiative in view of Turkey's pivotal role in the plan and the region.