Top foreign affairs officials from more than 50 countries participated last week in a conference on the future of diplomacy.
Although the Middle East peace process was held up as a model at the conference, the only Arab state to send a current official was Jordan.
Ramez Goussous, charge d’affaires of the Jordanian Embassy in Tel Aviv, joined the discussion. Mustapha Khalil, the former Egyptian prime minister, also attended.
At one point, Samir Huleileh, an aide to Ahmed Karia, the Palestinian Authority official in charge of economic affairs, joined a panel discussion on peace diplomacy.
Karia led the Palestine Liberation Organization’s secret negotiations with Israel in 1993 in also. Those negotiations led to the Israeli-Palestinian self- rule agreement signed in September 1993.
Top officials from the foreign ministries of Morocco, Egypt and other Arab states did not attend the “Diplomacy in Transition” conference. Some officials said they could not attend because of conflicts in their schedules.
Turkey and Nigeria were the only Muslim countries to send representatives.
Officials at the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Israel’s Council of Foreign Relations, the organizers of the event, denied that Muslim and Arab representatives avoided the event because it was held in Jerusalem.
In addition to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Egypt’s Khalil, speakers included Norwegian diplomat Terje Larsen, who also had been an active participant at the Oslo negotiations.
Larsen spoke about the effectiveness of holding secret talks, describing how he had helped Israel and the PLO lay the groundwork for their historic peace accord.
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