|
Israel, U.S. Trying To Block Moussa's Bid For Top Arab League Post
AMMAN, March 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel and the United States are placing pressure on Arab countries to prevent Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa from becoming the next Arab League chief, an Arab diplomat told a Jordanian daily published Sunday.
"Israel is using the United States to put pressure on the Arabs and this pressure is being exerted on some Arab countries despite their approval of Moussa's candidacy," the diplomat told Al-Arab Al-Yawm newspaper in Cairo.
"Some of these countries include Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Maghreb countries," the Arab diplomat said.
These moves were aimed at countering Moussa's "charismatic personality which can influence Arab decision-making," because he could "count on pressure on Arab public opinion to obtain amendments within the Arab League," he added.
The diplomat meanwhile said he expected "fundamental changes to be operated with the charter of the Arab League" if Moussa takes over the job of secretary general later this year.
The amendments, he said, would give the new Arab League chief greater powers to call for an emergency Arab summit without consulting with member states.
Moussa, 64, confirmed in February his candidacy to replace compatriot Esmat Abdul Meguid in May, when Meguid retires at the end of a second five-year term as secretary general of the Cairo-based Arab League.
Moussa, a career diplomat, has been Egypt's foreign minister for the past 10 years and was previously ambassador to New Delhi and the United Nations. He has been sharply critical of Israel's crackdown on a new Palestinian uprising and also has pushed for ending Iraq's international isolation.
Arab leaders are set to name Meguid's replacement when they hold their annual summit in Amman on March 27th. There are no other candidates for the job after former Yemeni prime minister Mohsen al-Aini withdrew his candidacy after Mubarak and his Yemeni counterpart, Ali Abdullah Saleh, settled on Moussa.
Recently, Moussa, responding to a decision by Israel's vanquished Labor Party to join a national unity government with Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon, said he did not foresee any "bad omen" in such a development.
"It is the absence of a willingness for peace that is a bad omen, not Labor," Moussa said.
The imminent change at the pan-Arab organization comes at a time of growing Arab-Israeli tension, and moves among Arab states to close a decade-old rift with Iraq concerning its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Moussa, who is internationally prominent and close to Mubarak, is also known for his nationalistic Arab views. An Arab diplomat said the choice of the "dynamic Moussa showed how important a role the League will play at a time when the Middle East peace process is at a crossroads after Ariel Sharon's election."
"The election means Israeli society is not yet ripe for peace and the Arabs must decide what choices they now have to make Israel agree to U.N. resolution 242," on withdrawing from land occupied in 1967, the Arab League diplomat said on condition he not be named.
Moussa has said that there was a "need to activate the role of the Arab League" at a time when "we are beginning a new phase in joint Arab action." Moussa referred in particular to a decision to hold Arab summits annually, a suggestion taken last October during an emergency summit to respond to the violence in the Palestinian territories.
Born in 1936, Amr Moussa studied law in Cairo before embarking on a career as civil servant in the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1958. He became Egyptian Ambassador to India in 1967, ambassador to the United Nations in 1990 and was nominated Foreign Affairs Minister in 1991.
Acting as an intermediary between the Israelis and Palestinians since 1992, when they were holding secret talks, he gave his full support to the September 1993 Declaration of Principles (Oslo Peace Process) and ensured Egyptian backing of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
A supporter of Israeli integration in the Middle East, he nonetheless is critical of the Israeli government for its lukewarm commitment to the peace process and for not signing in 1995 the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.
An astute diplomat, Moussa has worked to bring his country closer to Syria, Jordan and Iran, and has plated a vital role in granting Egypt a position of prestige within the region.
Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, in 1979, has played an important intermediary role in the peace process and tried to serve as a counterweight to perceived U.S. bias towards the Jewish state.
|
