Wrong-footed Arab governments on Sunday scrambled to rescue a summit that had been touted as a chance for them to embark on democratic change until host Tunisia announced it was calling it off at the 11th hour.
Egypt, expressing "astonishment and regret" at the fiasco, swiftly offered to host a replacement summit, but Tunisia rebuffed Cairo's attempt to seize the initiative and insisted it still had the right to stage the event.
"The problem has nothing to do with the location of the summit," which was to have opened here yesterday, the Tunisian foreign ministry said.
"Wanting to change the venue overshadows the real reasons" for the postponement, which was due to "serious differences on fundamental issues and future choices," it said.
The foreign ministry said Tunisia had the "right" to host the gathering because it currently held the rotating chairmanship of the 22-member Arab League.
In Sanaa, meanwhile, an official in Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's office said he and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had agreed the summit would be held in Cairo on April 16.
But an Arab League spokesman in Tunis, Hisham Yussef, said the situation was still in a state of flux and could not confirm the report.
"We have not been formally informed of a date," he said, adding that "hundreds of calls" were being made between foreign ministers and the league's secretary general Amr Mussa "on the steps to be taken in the next few days."
Mussa, head of the Cairo-based league, welcomed Egypt's offer to take over and host the summit -- the first formal gathering of Arab heads of state since the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein last April.
The Tunis cancellation statement late Saturday cited "differences" over proposals Tunisia had presented, which "it considers substantial and of great importance as to the process of development, modernization and reform in our Arab countries."
In Cairo, sources close to Mubarak's office said several Arab leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Jordan's King Abdullah II, had approved "in principle" that the summit could be held in Egypt's capital.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was also in agreement, along with the Yemeni leader, the sources said.
Arab foreign ministers who were in Tunis to prepare for the summit said they were stunned when the Tunisian government told them it was indefinitely postponing the event because of differences over political reform.
By late Sunday, many of the ministers had already left on flights from the airport outside Tunis, a press photographer said.
The stakes for the summit had been especially high as Washington was pushing for reform as part of its war on terror, while angry Arab peoples demanded their authoritarian governments do more to defend the Palestinians against Israel and to end the US-led occupation of Iraq.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS