Ayoon wa Azan (Ideas waiting to be implemented)

I heard the suggestion of the Qatari Prime and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad Ben Jassem Ben Jaber, to establish an organization of the Gulf States to solve the pending problems between Iran and some Arab countries through dialogue and diplomacy. This is a wise, logical but impossible suggestion. Indeed, no one trusts the regime that wraps old Persian ambitions in a religious cover. In addition, some of our states are very fearful in general. Thus, they will find real reasons to be afraid and if there aren’t any, they will invent some. I also agree with Sheikh Hamad on the need to reform the Arab League. I add however that the problem may not lie in the League but rather in Egypt. The power of the League’s secretary general had always relied on the Egyptian leadership of the Arab group, which is no longer the case. Egypt is the source and every secretary general had been an Egyptian national except for Shazili Al Qulaiby during the boycott years. When Egypt gains back its leading role within the Arab group, the power of the entire League will grow. Then, the reform will yield fruitful outcomes for the entire Arab group. I followed on the first conference of the Council of the Arab and International Relations that took place in Kuwait. For once, among the dozens of conferences in which I took part or that I attended in the past year, I found myself in agreement with the speech makers, some of which were of the highest Arab and international standards. Thus, I agree with Mohammad al-Sakr, the Chairman of the Council of Arab and International Relations, who said that we are defeated nation, one that was unjust to its own self, and one that insisted on facing the future by reverting back to the past. I will not be repeating the speeches that were detailed through the Arab media. I will only select what I believe is worthy to contemplate. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of The King Faisal Center for Islamic Research and Studies, was right as he said that America left behind in Iraq a political, sectarian regime leading to sedition. I heard Dr. Ayad Allawi’s speech at the conference and I spoke to him between the sessions. He criticized the performance of Nouri al-Maliki’s government and called for changing it. His was close to the point of view of the brother Massoud al-Barazani as he expressed it in Dafous last month. The two men both believe that the Iraqi prime minister does not have the necessary support or the ability to impose a unilateral dictatorship on Iraq. They both want to change the government and to prevent the prime minister from renewing his own term. As for the brother Amr Moussa, I never disagreed with him on anything he said ever since he was Egypt’s ambassador at the UN in New York; nor did I disagree with him in Kuwait as well. He spoke about the need to rescue the Egyptian economy and this is what I call for in every piece I write about Egypt. I heard Brother Moussa speaking on the following day during a session on “The Arab Nation and the Neighboring Countries” where he called for a united Palestinian-Israeli state under the UN’s Chapter Seven. I agree with him on that Israel does not aspire for peace and is working to abort every effort at establishing the two-state solution. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti said that the Palestinians are going through a battle of existence and are resisting in order not to become stranded once again. He spoke in details about Israel’s daily violations of the Palestinian rights in their lands and its attacks against the people and their property. Along with other colleagues, I met with our brother, Mohammad Ben Issa, the former Moroccan foreign minister, between the sessions. He said that the so-called Arab spring gave the impression that there will be democratic regimes which will make reforms and consolidate the social justice. However, the Islamic movements are the ones that benefitted by seizing power in several countries. I was quite happy to meet with Brother Mustafa Othman in Kuwait. The man is a Sudanese former foreign minister and the current investment minister. Brother Mustafa and I share a joke. Each year when we meet at the UN’s general assembly, he reminds me that “the invitation is still on.” He had once invited me to visit Sudan and I told him that I would come along if he invited me to visit Saint Tropez for instance. This time, I was the one who asked if the visit was still on, to which he said yes. Brother Amr Moussa was there and we all agreed to visit Sudan together. I will proceed tomorrow with more news from Kuwait. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.