UAE Calls for Saddam to Resign at Arab Summit

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, March 02, 2003

UAE Calls for Saddam to Resign at Arab Summit

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) appealed at the Arab summit for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down to avoid a war in the region, a UAE delegation member told Xinhua.

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) appealed at the Arab summit for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down to avoid a war in the region, a UAE delegation member told Xinhua.

In his four-point message to the Arab summit currently in session at this Red Sea resort, UAE President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nuhayyan gave the Iraqi leader a 14-day deadline to respond to his call, the UAE official said.

Al Nuhayyan urged the Iraqi president to step down and leave Iraq, while putting Iraq under the tutelage of the Arab League and the United Nations.

The initiative provides for "judicial guarantees, binding on both international and national levels, to be given to the Iraqi leadership to make sure that it won't be prosecuted."

Fifteen Arab heads of state and other top government officials were gathering for the annual 15th Arab summit, which is dominated by the Iraqi crisis in face of the massive military buildup by US and British forces.

Under mounting pressure from the world community and the widespread antiwar protests in the region, Arab leaders are striving to cast off their traditional differences to forge a unified stance against a war on Iraq, also a member of the Arab world.

Ten heads of state, and the de factor ruler of Saudi Arabia, are attending the meeting chaired by Bahraini King Hamad Bin Issa Al-Khalifa. The remaining 11 Arab League members, including Iraq and Kuwait, were represented by high-level delegations.

The summit is overshadowed by the traditional Arab acrimony as Qatar and Bahrain are hosting the US-led military buildup to the threatened war on Iraq.

Iraq is represented by Baghdad's number two, Ezzat Ibrahim, and Kuwait by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sabah Al-AhmadAl-Sabah.

The United States has urged Arab leaders at the summit to issue a call to Saddam to step down, calling it the only alternative to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and avoid a war.

President Saddam, however, in an earlier interview with the US CBS television network, ruled out his exile to other country and vowed to fight to the end any US aggression.

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