Growing Israeli-arab Tensions Highlighted at Cairo Conference

Political sparring between Israelis and Palestinians marred the opening of the third annual Middle East-North Africa economic summit that was held this week in Cairo.

Some 3,000 delegates from more than 80 countries attended the conference.

Among those attending was a 100-member Israeli delegation that included six government ministers. The delegation brought a collection of proposals for regional projects worth about $13.5 billion.

But uncertainties about the peace process cast a pall over the conference’s economic goals.

The 1994 conference in Casablanca, Morocco, and last year’s meeting in Amman, Jordan were full of high hopes for a new regional order in which former enemies would overcome their differences and forge economic partnerships that would insure a peaceful future for the region.

Those meetings arguably produced more proposals than tangible economic achievements. But at the very least, they brought the Israeli delegation to the table as a full partner of their Arab counterparts.

This week’s meeting in Cairo, by contrast, threw a harsh spotlight on a growing rift in Israeli-Arab relations.

The first tensions became evident weeks ago, when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak threatened to cancel the meeting to protest the stalemated negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

And hours before Tuesday’s opening of the conference, a dispute surfaced between the Israeli and Palestinian delegations over the wording of the meeting’s closing statements.

The Palestinians demanded that it include a unilateral declaration by Israel canceling its closure of the territories, which the Palestinians said was crippling their economy.

But the Israeli delegation refused, saying the closure had been imposed for security reasons.

While Palestinian officials lashed out at Israel, claiming that they could not survive the closure, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy criticized the summit during remarks to reporters.

“This is different from the previous conferences, which were done in participation with Israel,” said Levy, who did not directly address the summit.

“This conference is an Egyptian economic conference to which Israel has been invited.”

Nonetheless, the meeting provided the backdrop for continued political efforts to seal a long delayed agreement for implementing an Israeli redeployment in Hebron.

In Cairo for meetings with Levy and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the opening session that an agreement on an Israeli troop redeployment in the West Bank town was “close at hand.”

But U.S. and Palestinian officials stressed that gaps in the positions were still wide.

U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Christopher’s talks with Arafat had not clarified whether there had been any progress in the talks with Israel, which continued without any resolution Tuesday night in Tel Aviv.

In remarks before the full conference, Christopher, on a final trip to the region before retiring in January, said that integrating the region’s economies “will make war even less likely.”

Mubarak, for his part, used the podium to say that Israel must adhere to the land-for-peace principle if regional peace is to be achieved.

Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring drew applause when he, too, called on Israel to support the land-for-peace approach in its negotiations with its Arab neighbors.

Spring visited the region this week along with two other European foreign ministers in an effort to boost the European Union’s role in the peace process.

The 15 E.U. member states recently appointed a special envoy to the peace process, Miguel Angel Moratinos, who serves as Spain’s ambassador to Israel.

In a related development, a senior E.U. official in charge of Mideast and Mediterranean affairs earlier this week lambasted the European body for the “second-class role” it plays in the peace process.

“To put it bluntly, the Union lacks firmness, does not react quickly and is not coherent. It cannot even fulfill what it promises,” European Commissioner Manuel Marin wrote in a confidential document that was published in the Brussels-based weekly European Voice.

Marin criticized the E.U. Council of Ministers for “being content” with having a low status in the peace process even though it is the largest financial donor to the region.