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Qatar to Host Arab, Muslim Talks on Mideast Crisis
DOHA, Dec 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Qatar said Thursday it would host consecutive meetings of Arab and Muslim foreign ministers on Sunday and Monday as part of efforts to contain escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence.
A Qatari Foreign Ministry official told the official QNA news agency that both meetings would be held in the capital Doha.
The official said the foreign ministers of the 56-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which Qatar currently heads, would attend the Sunday meetings. The scheduling of the meeting comes following talks with embattled Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
The next day, only Arab ministers will meet. Then later Monday, a meeting of the OIC will reconvene with all members participating.
The scheduling of the meetings in Qatar come amid renewed military attacks by Israeli forces against Palestinian Authority targets. At least 18 people were injured in an Israeli airstrike against two Palestinian Authority buildings.
Israel's hardline prime minister, Ariel Sharon, had given Arafat 48 hours to arrest members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. The demands were in response to last weekend's bomb attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa, where 25 Israelis were killed and dozens more wounded.
Arafat, who claims that Sharon is attempting to topple the Palestinian Authority, said his security forces have already arrested more than 100 people and have placed Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin under house arrest in Gaza.
But Israel and the United States argue that the Palestinian Authority has not cracked down hard enough against resistance groups opposed to Israel's long military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
The bombardment by Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships of against targets in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank earlier this week was the largest simultaneous air strike at Palestinian targets since the start of the Palestinian uprising last year.
In addition, Friday's Israeli attacks apparently mark the failure of an Egyptian peace initiative. President Hosni Mubarak sent his foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, to Israel on Thursday for talks with Israeli leaders and Arafat.
Meanwhile, the highest-ranking Palestinian Muslim cleric on Wednesday accused the OIC, the world's largest Muslim organization, of largely ignoring his people's plight during 14 months of Palestinian-Israeli violence.
Ikrima Sabri, the mufti of Jerusalem, at a lecture in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi, said that the OIC had "so far not offered the Palestinians or Islamic sites [in Jerusalem] any tangible support."
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