Arab FMs declare ME peace process 'dead'

Thick clouds of smoke rise above Lebanese firemen trying to extinguish a fire at a factory, which was hit during Israeli air strike in Bourj Shimali near Tyre, southern Lebanon yesterday. For the fifth consecutive day, Israeli forces led an ever-widening assault on its northern neighbour that has killed 16 more on Sunday and left the country almost completely cut off from the outside world. PHOTO: AFP

At a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday, they declared Middle East peacemaking finally dead, only to implore the UN Security Council to revive it immediately.

As war raged between Israel and the Lebanese Shia Muslim group Hezbollah, an Arab minister said fighting was out of the question and diplomacy was the only option.

"I don't believe that anyone could expect that the Arab states will now enter a war or are ready to go into a war," Mohammed Hussein al-Shaali, minister of state from the United Arab Emirates, told a news conference.

"The alternative is political and diplomatic action and that is what we are doing," he added.

But, cowed by popular sympathy for Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamist group Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the ministers hardly dared criticise their Islamist rivals for provoking the military might of Israel.

Hamas and Hezbollah, despite their electoral successes, have not yet found a place in delegations to Arab League meetings.

The secular Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the old Palestine Liberation Organisation have maintained their grip on Palestinian foreign policy, despite the defeat of Fatah in January elections.

The furthest the ministers went was to say that all parties should coordinate their actions toward Israel because some acts undermine regional stability and do not serve Arab interests.

Saudi Arabia has come closest to overt criticism of Hezbollah with talk about "ill-considered adventures." In private, Egypt and Jordan share the Saudi view, diplomats say.

The trigger for the latest round of fighting was a cross-border operation by Hezbollah to capture Israeli soldiers for exchange with some of the thousands of Arab prisoners held by Israel, some of them jailed for decades without trial.