Arab summit set to sanction Israel without giving up on Mideast peace

CAIRO, OCT 20: Arab leaders are set to sanction Israel for its killings of Palestinian demonstrators but will remain committed to the peace process, delegates to preparatory meetings for their Cairo summit said Friday. Syria, meanwhile, is expected to take a harder line, having called for Arabs to not have any kind of truck or trade with Israel, and even ban handshakes between Israeli and Arab officials. After 10 hours of debate, Arab foreign ministers have adopted a document to be given Saturday and Sunday to heads of state detailing limited "measures" against Israel but reaffirming peace as "a strategic choice," delegates said. Among these will be a reduction or freeze in ties with the Jewish state. But even that measure will exclude "parties linked by a peace treaty or in direct negotiations with Israel, namely Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority," one of the officials told AFP. Three Arab countries have diplomatic relations with Israel: Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania. Cairo and Amman have alsosigned peace treaties with the Jewish state, but not Mauritania, which has never gone to war against the Israelis. Moreover, four Arab countries have started to normalise relations with Israel by opening liason offices, as in the case with Tunisia and Morocco, or trade offices, like Qatar and Oman. These four countries and Mauritania will be "called upon to cease all relations with Israel, to freeze or suspend all cooperation with the country," a senior Arab official said. Oman already closed its trade office in Tel Aviv on October 11 and Israel’s in Muscat. The next day, Morocco recalled the head of its liaison office in Tel Aviv. Jordan and Egypt say their ties with Israel "are not contradictory with their support of the Palestinian cause, and will actually permit channels of communication to stay open and put pressure on the Jewish state," the official said. The peace treaties signed by Cairo and Amman, in 1979 and 1994 respectively, will not be denounced, he added. However, Syrian Foreign Minister Faruqal-Shara on Friday charged that Arab countries who had established links with Israel within the peace process for the sake of the Arab cause were later betrayed. "Any ties with Israel and any handshakes (between Arabs and Israelis) amount to a means of pressure by Israel on Arab parties" involved in the peace process, he said in the Egyptian capital. The PLO’s political department Chief, Faruq Qaddumi, said Arab leaders were to study a call for the UN Security Council to put on trial Israeli "criminals" for the killings of more than 100 Palestinians during the last three weeks of violence. But Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak warned the summit would only succeed if it focused on "reasonable" measures against Israel. The meeting "will succeed if it responds to reasonable demands of the Arab peoples, and not to overexcitement. It will run aground if it exceeds the normal range of interests of Arab citizens," he said in an interview published Friday. The "formula of compromise" to take limited measures againstIsrael while still remaining attached to the peace process was arranged by "moderate" Arab countries and has received majority support, another Arab official said. It aims to "mitigate the maximalist positions such as calls to go to war, while still adopting a firm position vis-a-vis Israel," he said. The foreign ministers have also decided to limit the agenda of the Cairo meeting to two issues: the Palestinian position and whether to hold annual summits in March. All the other questions, such as the sanctions against Iraq, will be adressed at the next ordinary Arab summit, which will take place next March under King Abdullah II of Jordan, but at the seat of the Arab League in Cairo. rh/dab/hc