Remember when Obama said on the campaign trail that he had been to all 57 states? Many said that was a gaff and that he had been thinking about something else. Did you know that there are actually 57 States? Did his true agenda slip way back then? What do the people who live in those 57 states think about his agenda?
Islamic Bloc Cool to Obama’s Proposed ‘57-State Solution’
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, left, accompanies Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem at a meeting of OIC foreign minisers in Damascus on Monday May 25, 2009. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Days before President Barack Obama delivers a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, Islamic nations have set the conditions on which they would agree to any U.S. plan to offer Israel recognition as part of a Mideast peace deal.
Jordan’s King Abdullah has disclosed that Obama is interested in a “57-state solution” – offering Israel ties with the Islamic world in return for a peace deal.
Foreign ministers from the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), meeting in Damascus, said in a declaration that Islamic governments would not reward Israel for its “crimes.”
“Any development in relations – if any exist at all – [must be] tied to the concrete expression of Israel’s commitment to just and comprehensive peace, which would guarantee the restoration of legitimate national rights and withdrawal from the occupied lands in Palestine, Golan, and southern Lebanon,” it said.
Obama is due to speak on June 4 in Cairo, where he is expected to lay out his vision for the road ahead in Mideast peace efforts.
Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries which have full diplomatic ties with Israel, established as a result of bilateral peace agreements in 1979 and 1994. Several other Arab nations have partial ties but most are currently suspended.
Israel also has relations with a handful of non-Arab Muslim countries, including Turkey and the Central Asian republics. The Islamic countries most opposed to normalization include Iran, Syria and Libya.
OIC foreign ministers discussed the issue in the Syrian capital over the weekend.
The meeting adopted a resolution urging those member states with relations with Israel to sever them and for “all forms of normalization” with Israel to end “until a just and comprehensive peace is established in the region.”
It also agreed to uphold a broad Islamic boycott against Israel “until the liberation of all occupied Arab territories and the recovery of all the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”
The Islamic organization, which marks its 40th anniversary this year, has been flexing its muscles at the United Nations and elsewhere in recent years. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC’s Turkish secretary-general, said in his address to the meeting that the OIC had taken “a quantum leap” since the days when it was solely concerned with staging conferences and issuing recommendations.
It was now “becoming an indispensable interlocutor in large and influential international fora,” he said, adding that “joint Islamic action” and unified positions were an “effective weapon in the midst of the current international changes.”
The declaration agreed on in Damascus reflected an ambition to become even more influential “at the global level.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah has disclosed that Obama is interested in a “57-state solution” – offering Israel ties with the Islamic world in return for a peace deal.
Foreign ministers from the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), meeting in Damascus, said in a declaration that Islamic governments would not reward Israel for its “crimes.”
“Any development in relations – if any exist at all – [must be] tied to the concrete expression of Israel’s commitment to just and comprehensive peace, which would guarantee the restoration of legitimate national rights and withdrawal from the occupied lands in Palestine, Golan, and southern Lebanon,” it said.
Obama is due to speak on June 4 in Cairo, where he is expected to lay out his vision for the road ahead in Mideast peace efforts.
Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries which have full diplomatic ties with Israel, established as a result of bilateral peace agreements in 1979 and 1994. Several other Arab nations have partial ties but most are currently suspended.
Israel also has relations with a handful of non-Arab Muslim countries, including Turkey and the Central Asian republics. The Islamic countries most opposed to normalization include Iran, Syria and Libya.
OIC foreign ministers discussed the issue in the Syrian capital over the weekend.
The meeting adopted a resolution urging those member states with relations with Israel to sever them and for “all forms of normalization” with Israel to end “until a just and comprehensive peace is established in the region.”
It also agreed to uphold a broad Islamic boycott against Israel “until the liberation of all occupied Arab territories and the recovery of all the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”
The Islamic organization, which marks its 40th anniversary this year, has been flexing its muscles at the United Nations and elsewhere in recent years. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC’s Turkish secretary-general, said in his address to the meeting that the OIC had taken “a quantum leap” since the days when it was solely concerned with staging conferences and issuing recommendations.
It was now “becoming an indispensable interlocutor in large and influential international fora,” he said, adding that “joint Islamic action” and unified positions were an “effective weapon in the midst of the current international changes.”
The declaration agreed on in Damascus reflected an ambition to become even more influential “at the global level.”
Israeli girls wave national flags in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 21, 2009. OIC foreign ministers meeting in Damascus reaffirmed the stance that the Palestinian and Islamic claim to Jerusalem is a core issue for the world’s Muslims. (AP Photo)
“We can gain power through strengthening our economic relations and break[ing] existing barriers in this regard, as well as by way of mastering science, knowledge; by political cooperation and mutual support of our national causes.”
Ihsanoglu used the meeting to advance a proposal for an OIC peacekeeping force. A conceptual paper on the subject argues for the need to have such a force to tackle conflicts in Muslim parts of the world, noting that individual OIC member states are already key contributors to United Nations peacekeeping forces.
A brainstorming session was held on the peacekeeping proposal, an idea that has been circulating for some time. Early this year, a Malaysian government minister cited Israel’s military operation targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip and said the time was ripe for the OIC to cooperate in that way, to protect Muslims under threat when the U.N. was seen to be unable to do so.
A resolution adopted in Damascus requires member states to put forward their views on the peacekeeping initiative and for the OIC secretariat to convene, within six months, an intergovernmental expert group to study the proposals received.
‘Feverish campaign against Islam’
The gathered foreign ministers also discussed the ongoing OIC campaign to highlight and counter what it calls “Islamophobia,” a phenomenon it says has mushroomed since 9/11 and which it considers a contemporary form of racism.
Their declaration referred to “a feverish campaign against Islam, aimed at distorting its image … and against Muslims in general in order to malign them.”
The OIC has over the past decade shepherded more than a dozen resolutions through the U.N. General Assembly and human rights bodies against the “defamation” of religion, specifically Islam. The drive has drawn growing opposition from
religious freedom and free speech advocates who see it as an attempt to shield Islam and Islamic practices from criticism.
Ihsanoglu told a press conference in Damascus there was no truth to the allegation that its religious defamation push was a pretext to curtail freedom of expression.
The meeting in Damascus reiterated the view that the Palestinian cause and Jerusalem are the “core” issues for the Islamic world, and emphasized, once again, the stance that “resistance” is not “terrorism.”
The OIC’s insistence that the fight against “occupation” should be explicitly exempted from any definition of terrorism has for years stymied efforts at the U.N. to produce a comprehensive convention on international terrorism. The OIC stance applies especially to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also has implications for the jihad against Indian rule in disputed Kashmir and anti-coalition violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran-Arab ties
Meanwhile, the Syrian government used its hosting of the OIC meeting to defend its ally, Iran, against charges that the non-Arab Shi’ite regime in Tehran poses a threat to the mostly Sunni Arab states.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been pushing the argument that Israel and the Arab states face a “common danger” from Iran.
Egypt has also clashed with Iran in recent months. Iran, an ally of Hamas, condemned Cairo’s refusal to open a crossing point along its border with Gaza during Israel’s offensive against the terrorist group last winter.
Last month, Egyptian officials announced it had uncovered a plot by the Lebanese group Hezbollah – another Iranian ally – to attack Egyptian and Israeli targets in Egypt. Iran hit back, accusing Egypt of trying to undermine Hezbollah’s popularity ahead of June 7 elections in Lebanon.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallim accused Israel of promoting the idea of an “Iranian threat” as an attempt to divert attention from the Palestinian issue.
He told Syrian television that Iran as an OIC member had stood behind the Arab world and said Arabs should not forget that “the main enemy of Arabs is the Zionist regime.”
(Egypt’s foreign minister did not attend the OIC meeting; Iran’s did.)
Headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC groups 56 Muslim states in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, along with one each in Europe (Albania) and Latin America (Guyana). Its 57th member is “Palestine.”
The organization describes itself as “the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations” and claims to represent the world’s estimated 1.3 – 1.5 billion Muslims.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Spamming will be removed.
Due to spamming. Comments need to be moderated. Your post will appear after moderated regardless of your views as long as they are not abusive in nature. Consistent abusive posters will not be viewed but deleted.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.