Arab Countries Call for Urgent UN Meeting on Mideast: AL SpokesmanMissions of Arab countries at the United Nations have asked for the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to debate the worsening situation in the Middle East and Israeli brutalities against Palestinians, a spokesman of the Cairo-based Arab League (AL) said on Wednesday.The request was made after Egypt consulted on Tuesday with the groups of Arab, Islamic and non-aligned countries at the UN, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency quoted spokesman Talaat Hamed as saying. The 22-member AL Secretary General Esmat Abdel-Meguid Tuesday also called for providing international protection to Palestinians, saying that it has become a pressing demand in the light of Israel's retaliatory rocket attacks on the Gaza Strip. He urged the UN Security Council to take urgent and practical measures to send international forces to Palestinian territories in order to protect the defenseless Palestinians from Israeli assaults. Egypt recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv, Mohammed Bassiouni, in protest of Israel's air strikes on the Gaza Strip late Monday night to avenge a bomb attack on an Israeli settlers' school bus in Gaza which killed two Israelis and injured nine others. The Israeli authority held Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction responsible for the blast, despite Fatah's denial of any involvement in the incident. The Israeli offensive left more than four Palestinians dead and over 100 injured. More than 250 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed and thousands wounded in the clashes between the Palestinians and Israeli troops which erupted on September 28. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |