Arab League secretary general Amr Mussa called on Thursday for a meeting of the UN Security Council as soon as possible to try to find a way to restore peace in the Middle East. Mussa said that, after telephone contacts with a majority of Arab foreign ministers and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, agreement had been reached to seek the convening as soon as possible of a meeting of the UN Security Council. “There is an understanding with President Arafat about the need for an urgent and extraordinary Security Council meeting to examine the dangerous situation in the occupied Palestinian territories,” he said. Arab ambassadors at UN headquarters in New York had been instructed to work for the holding of the meeting, he said, adding that the League's follow-up committee would meet on January 4 and 5 in Cairo to discuss developments in the occupied territories. Mussa said that the Palestinian authority should cease all contact with the Israeli government after Israel declared Arafat as irrelevant and said that it was severing all contacts. “The Palestinian authority should take the same decision,” Mussa added, saying that he believed there was no longer any point of speaking of peace with Israel.
Israel made its dramatic declaration following a wave of Israeli strikes against Palestinian targets in retaliation for a bus ambush by Palestinian militants that killed 10 Jewish settlers.
Bureau Report