Report: Ex-Costa Rican Leader Likens Israel to South African Apartheid 

Arias: “It’s not wise to alienate 1.2 billion Muslims”

WASHINGTON, August 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez is encouraging his government to transfer its embassy in Israel from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to improve the Central American country's relations with the Arab world, an Israeli newspaper reported Saturday.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Arias’s campaign has sparked deep concern among Israeli officials and Costa Rica's Jewish community.

Costa Rica and El Salvador are the only countries that maintain embassies in Jerusalem. All others keep their embassies in Tel Aviv, a signal they do not accept Israel's designation of Jerusalem as its capital, said the paper.

Costa Rica's embassy has been in Jerusalem since 1963, except for a short period from 1980-1982. Its decision to house its embassy in Jerusalem has long been regarded as a symbol of its solidarity with Israel, said the Post.

According to the paper, housing the embassy in Jerusalem has prevented Costa Rica from developing relations with Arab countries.

The post quoted Costa Rican Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar saying that his country wants to establish relations with all Arab nations "with which we share democratic principles" and will try to encourage better economic ties between Costa Rica and the Arab world.

But Tovar added that Costa Rica's special relationship with Israel should not suffer as a result, and indicated that the administration is not exploring transferring the embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, the paper added that two of its sources said that Arias has been calling Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco daily to lobby him on the issue.

Arias, who sits on the international board of governors of the Peres center for peace said that he will not insist, and he accepts that Toyar said he’s not going to move it. However, he felt that it was necessary that he shares with the Costa Rican people my point of view on this particular issue."

Arias was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1987 after authoring a peace agreement that ended years of armed conflict among five Central American countries. As a well-known public figure, he travels abroad frequently.

In Beirut, Arias told reporters that Costa Rica has "paid the very large price of being ostracized by the Arab world adding that he regrets not having moved the embassy himself when he was in office from 1986-1990, but notes that his presidency preceded the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, after which the political status of Jerusalem took on heightened significance, said the Post.

"I do admit that perhaps it was a mistake not to transfer, not to move the embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I want to be honest with myself and with the Costa Rican people and everybody," Arias told The Post.

Now Arias says it is "urgent" for Costa Rica to make the move. Arias outlined the reasons why the embassy should be transferred in a July 24 opinion piece in the newspaper, Nacion.

"Send a new signal," he wrote. "The first day of my mandate, I signed a decree breaking my government's diplomatic relations with South Africa. It was a signal to the entire world that little Costa Rica was not identifying itself with the apartheid government in Pretoria.

"Today, 16 years later, I think that our government should, in the same way, send a new signal to the entire world by making a necessary rectification to move our diplomatic delegation from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv until a final solution is found regarding the new status that the city of Jerusalem should have.

"For many years, we deprived ourselves of having a real friendship with the Arab world, by maintaining along with just El Salvador, our embassy in Jerusalem. We are too old to continue to be a banana republic,” he said adding that it was not wise to alienate 1.2 billion Muslims.

The Post said that in May, shortly after Pacheco took office, and prior to Arias's campaign, a rumor spread among Costa Rica's Jewish community that the new president was considering moving the embassy and sending a Jewish ambassador to soften the blow.

When word reached Jerusalem, a senior Israeli official arranged a meeting with Foreign Minister Tovar on the sidelines of a gathering of the Organization of American States in Barbados.

During that meeting Tovar never once raised the possibility of transferring the embassy, which reassured the Israeli official that a move was not imminent, said the paper.

Costa Rica has ambassadorial-level relations with Morocco and Egypt, though there is an Arab League ban on Costa Rican products. The embargo is not rigidly enforced, however.

Israel's principal ally, the U.S., is mandated by Congress to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But both former president Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush have delayed the move repeatedly, arguing that opening the embassy in Jerusalem would prejudge final-status negotiations over the city's future and that it would not be in U.S. national security interests to do so, said the Post.
   

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