EGYPT/SYRIA: Syria Vice President says upcoming Arab summit meant to heal divisions in Arab World; deputy Prime Minister says Damascus not isolated by West

Record ID: 279720

  • Title: EGYPT/SYRIA: Syria Vice President says upcoming Arab summit meant to heal divisions in Arab World; deputy Prime Minister says Damascus not isolated by West
  • Date: 14th March 2007
  • Summary: (MER1) CAIRO, EGYPT (MARCH 13, 2007) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF EGYPTIAN PRESIDENTIAL PALACE
  • Embargoed: 29th March 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA6VHJ3Y5W6R2YJR3G9AB54N1VV
  • Story Text: Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara says after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo that the upcoming Arab Summit in Saudi Arabia will be aimed at healing divisions in the Arab world. In Damascus, Syrian deputy prime minister for economic affairs Abdullah Dardari says that the visit of the EU's chief of foreign diplomacy Javier Solana to Syria proves that Syria is not isolated.

    Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara said in Cairo Tuesday (March 13) that an upcoming Arab Summit in Saudi Arabia will be aimed at healing divisions in the Arab world.
    Shara also gave cautious praise to a security conference last week in Iraq that brought together the United States with its regional adversaries, Syria and Iran.
    The Arab Summit is scheduled to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the end of March, and is slated to discuss a host of regional crises, from ongoing tensions inside the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, to the conflagration in Iraq and to the war in Darfur.
    After meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Tuesday, Shara said at a news conference that he hoped the upcoming summit would be constructive.
    "I think that the working paper that we will introduce is an Arab paper that is aimed at fixing the Arab situation, revitalizing Arab cooperation, and facing all the challenges and the strife which some are trying to sow in our region and especially in Iraq, as you have seen," he said.
    Shara was also sharply critical of what he described as the Israeli government's negative position towards the Arab peace initiative, intended to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, first proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002.
    Although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that Israel sees "positive elements" in the Saudi peace initiative, Israel has called for changes in the document, which follows the "land-for-peace" formula endorsed by the international community.
    "What we have heard from the media and what we have heard from the Israelis -- that they do not like the Arab peace initiative with regards to (demarcating) the borders (between Israel and Palestinian territories) and (the fate of Palestinian) refugees -- all of these issues are aimed at excusing Israel from accepting the initiative," said Shara.
    After the Baghdad security talks last week, the United States said Turkey had offered to host a planned follow-up ministerial-level conference in April and that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would attend the meeting.
    The Baghdad conference brought together mid-level officials from Iraq's neighbours, the permanent U.N. Security Council members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- and Arab countries.
    Shara said in Cairo on Tuesday the meeting had been a good start.
    "In Baghdad, it was only a beginning. And we cannot guess how matters will proceed and how they will end. We hope that the end, or that the next steps, will be constructive, just as the first step (the conference) was positive," he said.
    Following Shara's news conference, Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Suleiman Awad addressed growing anger in Egypt over claims that an Israeli army unit massacred 250 Egyptian soldiers in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
    The claims, made in a recent Israeli TV documentary, have been denied by Israel which says that those it killed were Palestinian militants.
    The Egyptian government has refused to take any of the strong measures some members of Parliament are demanding in response to the accusations, such as expelling Israel's ambassador.
    On Tuesday Awad appeared to suggest that Egypt would not pursue the matter and that justice for Egypt's soldiers had been served by its performance in the 1973 Egypt, Israel and Syria war.
    "I do not want to address the reactions and the anger on the Egyptian street from either the political or legal point of view. But I would like say that what happened in 1967 represented the humiliation of the Egyptian soldier in war that we call "al-Naksa" [the Setback]. And the most important thing in the current dialogue is that we should not forget this, and that we should not let what happened in 1967 happen again. President Mubarak is always saying 'Peace should be protected through strength.' We avenged the death of our martyrs in the war of 1973 through the efforts of our honest soldiers and they regained the honour and the land and they didn't commit any war crimes. The Foreign Ministry is now being asked to follow up on this subject from both the political and legal point of views," he said.
    On March 6 Egypt's Foreign Minister called on Israel to investigate the charges against the Israeli troops, who were led by Israel's current infrastructure minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.
    Ben-Eliezer reportedly put off a trip to Egypt this week amid the public outrage stemming from the allegations.
    As Shara presented Syria's position on regional developments in Cairo, back in Damascus, Syrian deputy prime minister for economic affairs Abdullah Dardari said the visit of the EU's chief of foreign diplomacy Javier Solana to Syria proves that Syria is not isolated and ostracised by the West.
    Dardari said Solana's return to Damascus showed Syria must be included in efforts to restore peace and stability to the region.
    "When some Western powers tried to impose some kind of isolation of Syria -- of course Syria has never been isolated. The world is not just a few Western capitals," Dardari told Reuters.
    "When the European Union reached the conclusion that no serious business, no serious involvement in the Middle East can take place without constructive engagement with Syria, the decision was to dispatch Mr. Solana to Syria. We welcome him. We welcome the dialogue with the European Union. It was not Syria that stopped the dialogue with the European Union, it was that European side and the European side decided to come back," he continued.
    Damascus is largely shunned by the West, particularly Washington, for its alleged role in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri.
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