OIC condemns attacks in U.S.

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (Bahrain), OCT. 10. The Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of the

Islamic Conference (OIC) concluded their emergency meeting in Doha today with a condemnation of the September 11 attacks in the U.S. and a call for the trial of the perpetrators. However, the OIC Foreign Ministers appeared to have by-passed most of the issues that were expected to cause disputes between them.

In a satisfactory development for India, the Foreign Ministers did not make any mention of Kashmir while reiterating their standard line that a distinction must be drawn between terrorists and those people who are fighting foreign occupation. Too much must not be read into this omission in the Conference's final communique, since most member-states were particularly interested in keeping the struggle of the Palestinians and Lebanese on a plane different from terrorism.

The Pakistan Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdus Sattar, attended the meeting, but his position on the non-mention of the Kashmir issue in the final communique is not clear. At a briefing at the end of the Conference, Qatar's Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassam al Thani, said that the Foreign Ministers had agreed that the September 11 incidents were an act of terrorism.

Before the Conference got underway, there were differences between the member-states over the U.S. retaliation, particularly the military strikes on Afghanistan. Some of the hard-line States were known to be pressing for a condemnation of the military strikes in the final communique, while the moderate States allied to the U.S. could not go along. A condemnation was envisaged as a measure to preempt the U.S. from extending their anti-terror campaign to other States. Iraq and Syria in particular are apprehensive that the U.S. could include them as targets.

The Conference refrained from either supporting or opposing the U.S. campaign against the Taliban regime. However, they said that they were opposed to the expansion of the campaign to include other Muslim and Arab States and urged that innocents should not be hurt in the campaign against the Taliban.

With the Palestinian Authority President, Mr. Yasser Arafat, putting in a rather surprising appearance at the meeting, the Conference emphasised the urgency of finding a solution to the Arab-Israel dispute. The OIC is worried that the desire to resolve this dispute, which the U.S. administration currently displays, might vanish once the need to keep Arab States in the coalition against the Taliban is over. Sheikh Hamad made a candid observation on the weaknesses of the leadership in the Arab and Muslim worlds which forced them to repeatedly confront crises such as the present one. He said that the U.N. would be asked to call a special session to arrive at a conclusive definition of terrorism and to appoint a commission to study its causes.

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Section  : International
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