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OIC To Meet On Terror Crisis In Qatar In October
ISLAMABAD, Sept 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will meet in Qatar on October 9th to discuss the crisis over feared U.S. attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan announced Friday.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said the meeting in the Gulf state's capital of Doha had been called to "address the current situation".
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar will represent Pakistan, he added.
A number of Islamic countries, including Iran, have called for an urgent OIC meeting focusing on the crisis triggered by the September 11th attacks on the United States.
The OIC, which is comprised of 57 countries, has condemned the attacks on the United States, which left nearly 7,000 people dead, as "anathema to all human conventions and values".
But, the prospect of retaliatory action against Afghanistan, a Muslim country, has divided its member states.
In particular, many of them have called on the United States to make public any evidence it has linking Saudi-born Osama bin Laden to the attacks. He was declared the U.S's chief suspect on the day of the attacks on Washington and New York, but thus far the U.S. government has not made public any concrete evidence against him. The Saudi dissident, believed to be living in Afghanistan, has since categorically denied any involvement in the attacks.
Two prominent OIC countries, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have cut diplomatic relations with the Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling militia, since the start of the current crisis.
The Taliban regime, which has sheltered bin Laden since 1996, is not part of the OIC and now only enjoys diplomatic ties with one country, Pakistan.
A Gulf diplomat said Friday that Saudi Arabia had agreed to allow the United States to use state-of-the-art air command facilities in the kingdom for military action against bin Laden and the Taliban.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal announced Wednesday that the kingdom "will not avoid its duty" as part of the "coalition against terrorism".
The Parliamentary Union of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (PUOIC) - which met in Rabat, Morocco late Friday - condemned the "terrorist acts" in the United States but also denounced "state terrorism carried out by Israel" against the Palestinians.
A final declaration adopted after two days of discussions in the Moroccan capital said: "The conference affirms its firm condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and whatever its origin."
The Tehran-based PUOIC is made up of the legislative assemblies of 56 OIC member states, including the Palestinian Authority.
"It condemns the September 11th terrorist acts, offers its sympathy and expresses its sad condolences to the families of the victims," the statement said.
The conference also condemned "the state terrorism carried out daily by Israel against the Palestinian people."
Following the September 11th attacks, Abdelouahed Belkeziz, secretary-general of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), stated that he was shocked and deeply saddened by the attacks that led to the death and injury of over 7,000 innocent American citizens.
"Our tolerant Islamic religion highly prizes the sanctity of human life and considers the willful killing of a single soul as tantamount to killing humanity at large," stated Belkeziz.
The OIC secretary-general said that the Islamic world as a whole shares in the pain and sorrow of the American people in this terrible and devastating ordeal. The Islamic world, he stressed, denounced and condemned the perpetrators and sympathized with the innocent victims, their families, their loved ones and the American people as a whole.
Belkeziz went on to say that the OIC had always been adamant on condemning terrorism.
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