Arab summit opens, to relaunch Mideast peace offer [Archives:2005/827/Front Page]
ALGIERS, March 22 (Reuters) – A two-day Arab summit opened in Algiers on Tuesday with a plan to relaunch a peace initiative agreed in 2002 that Israel says is a non-starter. Thirteen top leaders, from 22 Arab League members, took part in the opening ceremony at a beach complex west of the capital.
Other countries sent high-level representatives.
Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the chairman of last year's summit, opened the meeting by asking for a moment of prayer for late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, who have died during the year. Hariri was killed by a car bomb in February.
In an attempt to send the world a message of peaceful intentions, the Arab leaders are expected to endorse an abridged version of their 2002 peace initiative, which offers Israel normal relations in exchange for withdrawal to pre-1967 borders.
But Israel said on Monday that the plan was a “non-starter” and Arab states should start negotiations without conditions.
A version of the final communique, released by the Egyptian state news agency MENA, suggests that the U.N. Security Council adopt the Arab initiative as the basis for peace.
The United States, which dominates the Security Council, favours the Israeli position that Israel and its neighbours should fix borders through negotiations.
The plan does not prevent individual countries from normalising relations with Israel at any time but so far only Egypt and Jordan have signed treaties and sent ambassadors.
Jordan, keen to build on a slight improvement in Arab-Israeli relations, had tried to make the 2002 plan more appealing to Israeli and international opinion but faced resistance from governments worried that Amman's proposal might imply concessions on the conditions Israel must meet.
Arab foreign ministers, in preparatory meetings on Saturday and Sunday, agreed to spell out the conditions in more detail, reducing the impact of the relaunch.
Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said the Algiers meeting would not be “the summit of normalisation”.
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