Yemen initiative gets Egypt praise

Yemen initiative gets Egypt praise

Sunday, however witnessed the Egyptian government ascertaining that it would throw its weight behind a Yemen initiative to activate common Arab work via replacing the Arab League with an Arab Union.

The announcement of the initiative was made by Egyptian Prime Minister, head of the Egyptian delegation to the 22nd Arab summit being held in the Libyan Surt city, Ahmed Mohamed Nazif.

Nazif, on the summit’s sidelines, praised President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s speech at the first meeting of the two-day summit.

Though there were many initiatives for reforming the Arab League, the Yemeni initiative was the best, he added.

The summit comes amid heightened, and lethal, tensions over Israeli plans to continue building in East Jerusalem and access to sites there revered by Jews and Muslims alike, and follows clashes in the Gaza Strip Friday that saw Israeli tanks and heavy machine-gunners exchange fire with Palestinian militants.

Hisham Yussef, Arab League chief Amr Moussa’s chief of staff, on Saturday told reporters in the coastal Libyan town of Sirte that the status of East Jerusalem would be a focus of the talks.Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East war, and regards it as an integral part of the Israeli capital. The Palestinians and Arab states hope one day to make the city the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

“In light of current conditions, it is difficult to talk about negotiations,” Yussef said Saturday.”It is unacceptable that while the Palestinians have been moving toward negotiations in good faith, the Israelis have taken decisions contrary to the understandings that were reached and to the possibility of achieving progress,” he said.Republished With Permission From Bikya Masr