Jordan Times
Monday, August 21, 2006
Arab FMs hold talks on
rebuilding
CAIRO (AP) — Arab League foreign ministers convened for an emergency meeting on
Sunday to discuss how to fund reconstruction in war-ravaged Lebanon and defuse
Mideast tensions amid rising discord between moderate Arabs and Syria, a main
backer of Hizbollah.
The Kuwaiti government plans to donate $800 million to Lebanon, announced
Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al Sabah upon arrival in Cairo. Saudi Arabia
said it had already donated $500 million, and other oil-rich nations have also
made pledges to chip in.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh urged his Arab counterparts to make
further commitments. “Lebanon is looking for more help for its reconstruction,”
he said ahead of the meeting.
But the foreign ministers did not agree on a plan.
Instead, they said the league's Arab Social and Economic Council would convene
to discuss how to fund rebuilding efforts.
Worried that the 34-day war between Hizbollah and Israel has given a boost to
Hizbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers, diplomats said Arabs want to
counter a flood of money that is believed to be coming from Tehran to Hizbollah
to finance reconstruction projects.
“This is a war over the hearts and mind of the Lebanese, which Arabs should not
lose to the Iranians this time,” said a senior Arab League official.
Eighteen of the Arab League's 22 foreign ministers gathered in Cairo — but in a
sign of growing regional tensions, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem had
skipped the meeting.
His absence came after many Arab governments were angered by a speech on Tuesday
by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who slammed fellow Arab leaders for not
supporting Hizbollah, saying the war had revealed them to be “half men”. Moallem
said that Assad did not mean Arab leaders in his comments Tuesday, according to
an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper.
“What President Assad meant by this phrase was those individuals inside Syria
and maybe outside it who threw doubts on the ability of the resistance to
achieve victory,” Moallem told Al Anba daily, which provided an excerpt of the
interview to the Associated Press on Sunday.
The foreign ministers on Sunday also failed to set a date for an Arab summit
that will address the Lebanon crisis and broader Arab efforts to revamp the
deadlocked Middle East peace process. Instead, they called on Arab League chief
Amr Musa to contact Arab governments and set a date.
“This is an extraordinary summit which needs to be well prepared,” Musa said.
Hesham Youssef, a top aide to Musa, told the AP on Thursday that the league was
working on a new peace plan to present to the UN Security Council next month.
During Sunday's meeting, the foreign ministers decided to set up a committee to
create the new plan.