Occupation Is State Terrorism: Lebanese President

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, March 27, 2002

Occupation Is State Terrorism: Lebanese President

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Occupation of other countries' territories is the most serious form of terrorism, the state terrorism, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said Wednesday in his opening speech at the 14th Arab League (AL) Summit.

Lahoud said that Israel has been escalating its aggression and continuing its slaughter of Palestinian civilians since the 1993 Oslo Accord and the convention of Madrid conference in 1991, which inaugurated the Mideast peace process.

He urged the Jewish state to withdraw from all Arab lands occupied in the 1967 Mideast War in accordance with the relevant U.N. resolutions on the Mideast issues, saying Israel's aggression against the Palestinians is against the whole Arab world.

The summit was officially kicked off at the five-star hotel Phoenicia Inter-Continental in Beirut on Wednesday with the absenceof heavyweights in the Mideast region.

The summit opened amid the wide-spread speculations that the meeting will be scaled down as many heavyweights, including Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak,King Abdullah of Jordan and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq failedto show up.

Observers believe the influential leaders absent themselves fromthe event for various reasons, but mostly because of the disagreement over the wording of the draft final communique, which calls for continuing Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation instead of encouraging peace talks.

This cast a shadow over the summit as to the fate of the much-discussed Saudi peace initiative and if it will finally be adopted as an unified Arab peace plan at the summit.

Heads of state attending the opening session, among others, are Crown Prince and de facto ruler Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, President Bashar Assad of Syria, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, King Mohammed VI of Morocco and President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia.

Other dignitaries are Prime Minister Atef Obeid of Egypt, Iraqi Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim, Vice President Ali Osaman Taha of Sudan and Prime Minister Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, AL chief Amr Moussa, EuropeanUnion foreign policy chief Javier Solana, representatives of the African Union and other international organizations also attended the opening ceremony.

The Beirut summit is expected to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iraqi issue and pan-Arab economic cooperation in the process of economic globalization.

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