[ppi] [ppiindia] Cold shoulder

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/791/eg1.htm

20 - 26 April 2006
Issue No. 791

Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Cold shoulder
On his first official visit to Cairo, the new Palestinian foreign minister 
received a cool welcome, reports Dina Ezzat 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     
      Mahmoud Al-Zahhar 
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After years when Nabil Shaath and Farouk Qaddoumi were the faces of Palestine 
in the corridors of the Arab League and after a brief interval during which 
Nasser Al-Qedwa acted as the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, 
this week the Arab organisation played host to the first ever Hamas Palestinian 
foreign minister, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar.

At the beginning of an Arab tour, Al-Zahhar was accorded an adequate if not 
exceptional warm welcome by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa who on 
Saturday and Sunday held no less than three rounds of talks with Al-Zahhar 
including an elegant working lunch on Sunday. 

The Moussa-Al-Zahhar talks included a téte-â- téte session of which no details 
were revealed except what some Palestinian sources revealed were the bitter 
complaints expressed by the Palestinian official on what he qualified as a 
disappointing Arab stance in reaching out to the Palestinian people.

Al-Zahhar, Palestinian sources say, made an effort to hide his anger but was 
sure to tell Moussa that at a time when international donors have cut off their 
vital aid to the Palestinian people, it was the Arab world that should have 
jumped to the rescue of the Palestinians. Moussa, to quote the same Palestinian 
sources, asserted to his interlocutor that the Arab League will exercise 
maximum efforts to generate decent financial assistance to the disturbingly 
empty Palestinian coffers through governmental and non- governmental means.

Indeed, hours before Al-Zahhar's arrival in Cairo, Moussa launched an appeal 
for public donations to be made in solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

"It is very disappointing for us to see that Arab countries are simply holding 
back their badly needed resources," commented one Palestinian source. He said 
that the general impression in the Hamas government is that Arab governments 
are withholding their aid in order to force the new Hamas government to succumb 
to the almost collective political will which aims to force it to declare its 
recognition of Israel and to publicly state its readiness to enter into peace 
talks with the Israeli government.

On record, Arab officials deny any arm- twisting but on background they argue 
that Hamas needs to know that once in government it has certain international 
responsibilities; recognising Israel is one of them. "This is not about Israel, 
it is about the interests of Palestinians that will not be served either on the 
political or financial levels if Hamas continued to stall on the declaration of 
its recognition of Israel," commented one Egyptian official. He added that for 
purposes of political pragmatism Hamas must talk the language the world is 
speaking: a negotiated settlement.

Sources say Al-Zahhar's reluctance to issue such a policy statement on his 
first visit to Cairo, at the launch of Hamas's first Arab tour since taking 
power in January, led to the Egyptian government according him a cool 
reception. He was not received by the president or his foreign minister. And 
only on very short notice, and upon Al-Zahhar's request, did he meet Omar 
Suleiman, the General Intelligence chief who has been acting as a hands-on 
officer of the Palestinian- Israeli file for several years.

During the meeting, which was off-limits to the press, Al-Zahhar, Palestinian 
sources say, was reminded that while Cairo is willing to support the 
Palestinian government out of respect for the choice the Palestinian people 
made at the ballot box, it will do so only within the long-standing framework 
of an Arab-Israeli peace process on the basis of a two-state solution. 
Al-Zahhar, sources add, listened politely but was still reluctant to make a 
public declaration of his government's recognition of the Israeli government or 
of the Arab peace initiative as an accepted basis for a settlement.

Adopted by the Arab summit in 2002, the Arab peace initiative calls for a 
comprehensive Arab- Israeli peace, the establishment of a Palestinian state on 
the territories occupied in 1967, a fair and legal settlement of the plight of 
close to five million Palestinian refugees and full Arab-Israeli normalisation.

"I listened to what the Arab League secretary- general said about the Arab 
peace initiative and I promised to take it to the government, to all 
policy-makers in Palestine and certainly to the Palestinian people," Al-Zahhar 
said in a joint press conference with Moussa on Saturday. Despite the many and 
repeated questions, Al-Zahhar declined to make any further statements. He 
instead seemed more interested in talking about the need of immediate support 
for the Palestinian people "on the basis of transparency" to dispel the concern 
of Arab capitals about mischanelling aid. 

During his press conference with Moussa, Al-Zahhar warned that failing to reach 
out to the Palestinian people and pushing the Hamas government into a corner 
will not pull the government down simply because there is no other alternative. 
"It is unacceptable to starve the Palestinian people in order to topple the 
Hamas government," Al-Zahhar said.

However, as Arab officials insist, the choice is for the Hamas government to 
make. If it wishes to have governmental support it needs to offer assurances of 
political cooperation. Arab capitals, one Cairo-based Arab diplomat said, are 
not at all interested in getting into a confrontation either with Israel or 
with the US "not even when we know that Israel is reluctant to reach a serious 
and fair settlement. It is simply an unaffordable confrontation."

On his departure from Cairo, Al-Zahhar was given Arab League political and 
financial reassurances. But he was also offered Cairo's advice to exercise 
political realism. Whether he will accept the advice is not clear. What is 
certain, to quote Egyptian sources, is that any meeting with top Egyptian 
officials remains conditional on his willingness to acknowledge some political 
facts


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