.bmp)
.bmp)
DOHA-Israel's arch foes condemned the Gaza onslaught at a summit in Qatar on Friday, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the prosecution of Israeli leaders by an international court.Also at the summit, Qatar and Mauritania decided to suspended their relations with Israel, a Mauritanian diplomat said."Mauritania and Qatar have decided during a meeting behind closed doors to suspend their ties with Israel," the diplomat, who requested anonymity, told AFP.The move followed appeals by both Ahmadinejad and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad that Arab states sever any ties they had with Israel.Mauritania has diplomatic ties to Israel, while Qatar is the only Gulf Arab country with commercial relations with the Jewish state.Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries which have signed peace treaties with Israel and which have Israeli embassies.Ahmadinejad called for the prosecution of Israeli leaders by the International Court of Justice for "crimes" against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.He urged "punishing the criminal leaders of the Zionist entity," for the 21-day-old Israeli offensive on Gaza, which so far has killed more than 1,100 and wounded another 5,000.The Iranian leader called on Arab and Muslim countries to "boycott all products of the Zionist entity" and on countries with ties to Israel "to cut them."This is the minimum for the solidarity with the Palestinian people and the resistance in Gaza," he said, in an address in Farsi was translated into Arabic at the summit.The Doha summit is being attended by 13 of the Arab League's 22 members plus hardline Israeli foe Ahmadinejad.It went ahead despite the objections of the Palestinian leadership and regional heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the lack of a quorum of 15 members to make the summit an official meeting of the Arab League. Ahmadinejad's comments echoed requests by Assad, who called for "cutting all direct and indirect ties with Israel, and shutting down its embassies.""Resistance has become the only path to peace, which comes through returning rights from an enemy that only understands the language of force," Assad said.Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal vowed the Islamist movement would never accept Israel's conditions for a ceasefire in Gaza."I assure you, despite all the destruction in Gaza, we will not accept Israel's conditions for a ceasefire," the Damascus-based leader of Hamas told the gathering."We tell our loved ones in Gaza, the aggression will soon crash on the rock of your steadfastness," Meshaal addd.Shortly after he spoke, Hamas said it would return to Cairo for a fresh round of talks on a Gaza truce after an Israeli delegation informed Egypt of the Jewish state's position, a senior Islamist told Al-Jazeera television.The presence of Hamas's leadership at the Doha summit and the absence of the Palestinian Authority, led by president Mahmud Abbas, highlighted the divisions between the Arab countries, Qatar and Syria backing Hamas and Egypt and Saudi Arabia backing Abbas."We would have favoured the participation of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, however he decided not to come," Qatar's Emir said in his opening address.The official Qatar News Agency said that the leaders of Algeria, Comoros, Lebanon, Mauritania, Sudan and Syria were attending the summit while Djibouti, Iraq and Libya had sent senior officials.Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, whose country presides over the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), was also in Doha for the summit.Non-Arab Iran and Turkey were also taking part with Ankara sending an aide to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Qatar had been pressing for an emergency Arab summit on the Gaza crisis since soon after Israel launched its offensive.But it has repeatedly run into opposition from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which have been strongly critical of Hamas ever since the Islamist movement seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in June 2007.Arab League chief Amr Mussa acknowledged that there was "chaos" in Arab ranks over the Gaza crisis as Arab foreign ministers gathered in Kuwait City for a separate, official meeting.http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20090116/twl-mideast-conflict-gaza-qatar-summit-575b600.html
As in the days of Noah...
