The Hindu : Beirut: Meet endorses peace plan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 29, 2002

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International

Beirut: Meet endorses peace plan

BEIRUT March 28. The Arab summit in Beirut on Thursday unanimously endorsed a Saudi Arabian plan for West Asia peace, delegates said.

They said Arab leaders meeting for a second day had all approved the plan proposed by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah which offers Israel normal relations if it withdraws from all occupied Arab land, accepts a Palestinian state and agrees to the return of Palestinian refugees.

Delegates said the Arab summit had also approved an agreement between Gulf War foes Iraq and Kuwait, the first of its kind since the 1990-91 Gulf crisis.

Iraq's number two leader, Ezzat Ibrahim, and Crown Prince Abdullah embraced and kissed cheeks amid applause at the reopening of the Arab summit, live television pictures showed. Earlier, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, had said that an Iraqi pledge never to invade the neighbouring Kuwait again would be included in the final resolution of the two-day summit.

The document stipulates that ``Iraq respects the independence and the sovereignty of Kuwait and the respect of its security, which will guarantee avoiding anything that can lead to a repetition of what happened in 1990,'' he said.

Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990, only to be driven out by a U.S.-led coalition, strongly backed by Saudi Arabia, at the beginning of the following year.

The final resolution also expresses the ``respect and the cooperation of the two parties on the lingering issues, particularly concerning the missing,'' both Kuwaitis and Iraqis.

This was the first time that Iraq agreed to voice such a pledge. — AFP

Israelis feel vulnerable

JERUSALEM March 28. Israelis were asking today how a Palestinian suicide bomber managed to evade unusually tight security to walk into a hotel with a large bag of explosives and blow himself up, killing at least 20 people.

The bombing in the coastal city of Netanya on Wednesday served as a new reminder of Israel's inability to make itself completely immune to such attacks, despite raising security to unprecedented levels after 18 months of tit-for-tat violence.

— Reuters

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