Iraq storms out of Arab League FM's meeting in Cairo
CAIRO, Jan 25: Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammad Said Al-Sahhaf stormed out of an Arab meeting here Sunday to protest a final statement which failed to meet Baghdad's demands, a senior member of the Iraqi delegation said, report agencies.
"The final communique is a cover up for maintaining forever the UN embargo," Nabil Najm, an undersecretary at the Iraqi foreign ministry, told reporters here.
Baghdad wanted Arab foreign ministers to unilaterally lift the crippling eight-year-old sanctions which were slapped on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"This statement is a mockery," Najm told reporters at the Arab League headquarters where the foreign ministers and other representatives of the 22 member pan Arab organisation met.
According to participants at the closed door meeting called to discuss the Iraqi crisis, Sahhaf and his delegation angrily walked out after hearing a reading of the final statement.
The amendments and strong pressure from the meeting's Egyptian hosts failed to secure the return of Sahhaf who boycotted the adoption of the final statement accusing his Arab counterparts of "plotting."
After the reading of the original text Sahhaf launched a scathing attack on Arab governments. The document is a plot aimed at covering up new US and British attacks on Iraq, he said.
The one day meeting which had already been postponed from last month, was called to consider Yemeni requests for a full Arab summit to consider the December 16-20 US and British air strikes on Iraq.
Baghdad pressed fellow Arab governments to issue a clear condemnation of the air strikes and to agree to defy the UN sanctions that have crippled Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
But Sahhaf charged that "the Hurghada group, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia conspired to draw up a communique which instead of condemning the aggression on Iraq placed the responsibility on Iraq.
The foreign ministers of Egypt, Yemen, Oman, Syria and Saudi Arabia met twice this month in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada to map out Sunday's meeting.
"The useless and very negative statement was written under pressure from the United States because it did not call for an immediate lifting of the sanctions and did not condemn outright the US-British strikes," Sahhaf said.
Some of the stronger criticism of Iraq included in the earlier draft was excised from the final text.
References to Baghdad provoking "it its neighbours and demands that it" recognise that its occupation of Kuwait was a mistake were dropped as was a clause saying that such an Iraqi "recognition is an essential condition for reaching real Arab solidarity.
A section which originally urged Iraq to "put an immediate end to its provocations" was changed to read "out an immediate end to these positions", according to the official text read to reporters here.
But the Arab ministers kept in a call for Iraq to take the necessary steps to prove its good intentions towards Kuwait and neighbouring countries by words and deeds."
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were adamant that Baghdad should apologise for its 1990 invasion and respect the UN demarcated border with Kuwait. In recent weeks Iraq has threatened repeatedly to scrap the border.
The Arab foreign ministers also urged Baghdad to cooperate with the security council in implementing resolutions concerning Iraq.
The final statement also established a follow-up committee to oversee the efforts to end the sanctions and in response to Iraqi complaints that all its members were governments "hostile' to Baghdad, added Bahrain to the list originally announced.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa insisted that the statement was a good one for Iraq and strongly urged Sahhaf to return to the meeting, warning that Baghdad's interest would be at stake if he did not.
Both he and Arab League chief Esmat Abel Meguid described Sahhaf's walkout as "deplorable."
Meanwhile, the United States on Sunday applauded the Arab League's call for Iraq to comply with UN resolutions on weapons inspections and said Baghdad's walkout from the meeting only underscored its isolation.
State Department Spokesman James Foley said Washington also was "particularly pleased" with the league's rejection of "Iraq's recent threats against its neighbours" including Kuwait.
The 22 nation group met in Cairo to map out demands for an easing of United Nations sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and to respond to US led air strikes last month over Baghdad's alleged failure to cooperate with UN arms inspectors.
While it condemned the attacks and backed the lifting of the sanctions, the league's statement also called on Iraq to implement UN resolutions on weapons inspections and refrain from making any "provocative actions," toward its neighbours.
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