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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS