Arab League proposes new WAsia peace conference

Cairo, Nov 13: Arab League foreign ministers meeting in an emergency session in Egypt called for a fresh international peace conference to resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute based on the principle of land for peace.

The Arab ministers also pledged to break financial sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, but gave scant details as to how that would be accomplished.

The ministers, who convened at the Cairo-based Arab League over Wednesday's killing of 19 Palestinian civilians by Israeli fire in Gaza, said in a communique that permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Israel and Arab parties would be invited to attend the peace conference.

The meet would be aimed at ''reaching a just and comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict on all tracks according to the relevant international resolutions and the principle of land for peace'', the communique said.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar of the militant group Hamas sidestepped whether his group would attend such a peace conference alongside Israel.

''Will this conference be held or not? What's the agenda of the conference? We don't know. I leave this matter to the future,'' he told reporters after yesterday meeting.

The Israeli army, which says Wednesday's shelling was aimed at preventing rocket attacks on Israel, said the deaths were caused by a technical malfunction.

Israel launched a major offensive in Gaza in June after Palestinian gunmen captured an Israeli soldier and killed two others in a cross-border raid. The military assault has killed more than 370 Palestinians, around half of them civilians. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Financial Sanctions

The ministers said that they would refuse to abide by crippling sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe after Hamas ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party in elections in January.

''There will be no compliance with any restriction imposed.

... The Arab banks have to transfer money (to the Palestinians),'' Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told a news conference.

The decision came as Hamas and Fatah opened talks on allocating cabinet seats in a unity government that Palestinians hope will lead to the easing of Western sanctions that have deepened hardship in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza.

The Arab ministers said they would agree on mechanisms to bypass the embargo. One Arab diplomat said that after difficulties earlier this year, the League was able to successfully transfer 100 million dollar to the Palestinian Authority, although he did not give details of how the transfer was made.

The diplomat said the problem was not finding a bank willing to do it, but persuading donor states to produce the money.

The decision to ignore sanctions coincided with a Palestinian call for aid, particularly to help rebuild the town Beit Hanoun, the site of Wednesday's deadly shelling.

''Beit Hanoun is a disaster area that needs 50 million dollars to rebuild what the latest incursion has destroyed and to rescue the families of the martyrs and wounded immediately and urgently,'' Zahar said.

''Our people are looking to you to provide the highest degree of support and assistance and to help lift the unjust embargo,'' he told the ministers Moussa said Kuwait had announced during the yesterday meeting a pledge of 30 million dollars to the Palestinian Authority via the Arab League.

Reuters

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