Leaders of 37 Moslem nations and the Palestine Liberation Organization converged on this resort city today for tomorrow's opening of the Islamic summit conference, which is expected to focus on collective action against Israel. The participants' hopes of negotiating an end to the Iran-Iraq war appear to have been dashed by Iran's refusal to attend the talks. A five-man delegation returned from Teheran today after having failed to persuade the Iranians to reconsider their boycott of the meeting.
Conference sources said the Islamic nations had hoped to mediate the four-month-old war between Iran and Iraq. But Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, said yesterday that Iran would boycott the conference because President Saddam Hussein of Iraq would be present. Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf's largest oil exporter and the host for the conference, has expressed concern that the war might spread to neighboring countries.
A number of Moslem nations besides Iran will not be represented at the conference. Libya is boycotting the meeting to express its displeasure over the basing of United States radar surveillance planes in Saudi Arabia since the outbreak of the Persian Gulf war. Afghanistan was banned from the conference because its Sovietbacked Government is trying, with the help of Soviet troops, to put down Moslem rebels. Egypt was excluded because of its peace treaty with Israel.
The summit meeting will hold its opening session tomorrow in the open-air courtyard of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, birthplace of Islam. Security was extremely tight in the area, the site of fighting a year ago between Saudi security forces and Moslem extremists who occupied the mosque.
The agenda calls for talks on the Palestinian cause and ways of putting pressure on Israel to yield Arab territories occupied during the 1967 Mideast war. The Islamic nations are especially concerned about Israel's control of largely Arab East Jerusalem, which contains one of Islam's holiest shrines, the Al Aksa Mosque. The conference, including nations representing some 800 million Moslems, is calling itself the ''Palestine and Jerusalem summit'' and is expected to reach a rapid consensus on an anti-Israeli program, a Saudi delegate said. ''While the aim of the summit is to put Islamic 'swords into plowshares,' resolutions on economic and political sanctions against the enemies of the Islamic nations are perfectly relevant,'' he said.
No official indication was given of specific actions to put pressure on Israel. But political sources said the campaign would probably be directed against Israel's supporters in Western Europe and the United States.
Source: New York Times
Monday, January 26, 1981
Thursday, January 8, 1981
KISSINGER URGES U.S. POST MIDEAST FORCE
Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger urged today that the United States enhance its military presence in the Middle East to counter growing Soviet activity there. Speaking at a news conference midway through what he has repeatedly termed a private visit to the area, Mr. Kissinger said that no regional leader could have confidence in a Rapid Deployment Force, as envisioned by President Carter, that remained in the United States without concrete facilities on the spot.
He also urged that West European and American policies on the Middle East be coordinated; he rejected recent European stands favoring Palestinian self-determination, or statehood, dismissing ''the theory that if we are going to get a Palestinian state, it would quickly or relatively quickly cause the problems in the Middle East to disappear.'' ''The vital interest of the United States and Europe cannot be separated,'' he said. ''Therefore, I consider it impossible that there can be two different approaches that are both correct.''
Although the former secretary has no official standing in the President-elect Ronald Reagan's administration, he is expected to brief Mr. Reagan and his staff and therefore is being received as an important figure. Traveling on the private jet of William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS Inc., Mr. Kissinger saw President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt last week in Cairo, flew to Somalia for a talk with President Mohammed Siad Barre and during two days in Israel met with a range of Government and opposition leaders, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, leader of the oppostion Labor Party, and former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.
He toured East and West Jerusalem with Mayor Teddy Kollek and said the city should remain united but did not specify under whose sovereignty. He flew to the Etzion Airfield, the modern Israeli base in a slice of the Sinai that is to be returned to Egypt next year. That trip, with Israeli military officers, raised excited speculation in the Israeli press that he would recommend to Mr. Reagan that the United States use at least some of the base. But the former secretary appeared to dismiss the idea at his news conference by reporting his impression that Egypt would not allow it.
He did call for an American military role in the region, however. ''If you look at the map,'' he said, ''you see a large Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a large Soviet-supported presence in Ethiopia, Soviet-supported operations out of Libya, and I do not think that the leaders of this area who are concerned about this can visualize the concept of a Rapid Deployment Force that comes from the United States, 8,000 miles away, into what?'' He urged two steps: ''One is to put some visible American presence into this perimeter along the lines of the facilities that have already been negotiated by the Carter Administration, and they should now be given some concrete content. That would at least indicate that we are there, and that attacking key countries is not a matter in which the United States can be disinterested. Secondly, we require for our own country a strategic doctrine that enables us to be relevant to these crises, together with other interested countries.''
Source: New York Times
He also urged that West European and American policies on the Middle East be coordinated; he rejected recent European stands favoring Palestinian self-determination, or statehood, dismissing ''the theory that if we are going to get a Palestinian state, it would quickly or relatively quickly cause the problems in the Middle East to disappear.'' ''The vital interest of the United States and Europe cannot be separated,'' he said. ''Therefore, I consider it impossible that there can be two different approaches that are both correct.''
Although the former secretary has no official standing in the President-elect Ronald Reagan's administration, he is expected to brief Mr. Reagan and his staff and therefore is being received as an important figure. Traveling on the private jet of William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS Inc., Mr. Kissinger saw President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt last week in Cairo, flew to Somalia for a talk with President Mohammed Siad Barre and during two days in Israel met with a range of Government and opposition leaders, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, leader of the oppostion Labor Party, and former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.
He toured East and West Jerusalem with Mayor Teddy Kollek and said the city should remain united but did not specify under whose sovereignty. He flew to the Etzion Airfield, the modern Israeli base in a slice of the Sinai that is to be returned to Egypt next year. That trip, with Israeli military officers, raised excited speculation in the Israeli press that he would recommend to Mr. Reagan that the United States use at least some of the base. But the former secretary appeared to dismiss the idea at his news conference by reporting his impression that Egypt would not allow it.
He did call for an American military role in the region, however. ''If you look at the map,'' he said, ''you see a large Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a large Soviet-supported presence in Ethiopia, Soviet-supported operations out of Libya, and I do not think that the leaders of this area who are concerned about this can visualize the concept of a Rapid Deployment Force that comes from the United States, 8,000 miles away, into what?'' He urged two steps: ''One is to put some visible American presence into this perimeter along the lines of the facilities that have already been negotiated by the Carter Administration, and they should now be given some concrete content. That would at least indicate that we are there, and that attacking key countries is not a matter in which the United States can be disinterested. Secondly, we require for our own country a strategic doctrine that enables us to be relevant to these crises, together with other interested countries.''
Source: New York Times
Friday, January 2, 1981
Mrs. Thatcher Snubs Five Who Defied Olympic Ban
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today snubbed five Olympic gold-medal winners who defied her request to boycott the Moscow Games by deciding not to recommend that they be given awards in Queen Elizabeth's New Year's Honors List.
''The Government advised them not to go for very, very good reasons,'' said Mrs. Thatcher, who supported President Carter's decision to boycott the Olympics because of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
She added: ''We felt very strongly indeed that to go to the Olympics, which is an ideal, would be used by Moscow to indicate that the rest of the world approved of her policies. We took a very firm line. We could not possibly go back on our advice, which was totally and utterly right.''
The gold medalists were the sprinter Alan Wells, two middledistance runners, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, a decathlon athlete, Daley Thompson, and the swimmer Duncan Goodhew.
Source: New York Times
''The Government advised them not to go for very, very good reasons,'' said Mrs. Thatcher, who supported President Carter's decision to boycott the Olympics because of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
She added: ''We felt very strongly indeed that to go to the Olympics, which is an ideal, would be used by Moscow to indicate that the rest of the world approved of her policies. We took a very firm line. We could not possibly go back on our advice, which was totally and utterly right.''
The gold medalists were the sprinter Alan Wells, two middledistance runners, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, a decathlon athlete, Daley Thompson, and the swimmer Duncan Goodhew.
Source: New York Times
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)