CAIRO (Agencies)
Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo on Sunday to take a common position on Israeli raids which killed at least 205 people in Gaza, the Arab League said on Saturday.
Libya, the only Arab country on the U.N. Security Council, will seek an urgent meeting of the council, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told reporters, and Syria called for an emergency Arab summit to discuss the crisis.
"The council of Arab foreign ministers will hold an extraordinary and immediate meeting tomorrow ... at the request of Jordan," Moussa said.
"It will take a joint Arab position on what is happening and at the same time agree on the steps to be taken," he said.
Moussa said the attacks on Saturday were only the beginning.
"We are facing a continuing spectacle which has been carefully planned. So we have to expect that there will be many casualties. We face a major humanitarian catastrophe," he said.
A separate Arab League statement condemned the Israeli attacks and said Jordan and Egypt wanted the foreign ministers to "call for an end to the massacres which Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in Gaza". |
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Syria wants emergency summit Syria condemned the Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip as a "barbaric crime" and called for an emergency summit of the Arab League, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The official SANA news agency said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was in contact with Arab leaders on the possibility of holding an emergency Arab summit to discuss what a Syrian official source called a "heinous crime".
The agency said that Assad, who hosted the last Arab summit earlier this year, spoke to the leaders of Qatar, Libya, Sudan and Yemen to discuss the Israeli raids on Gaza.
The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, also proposed that Arab leaders follow up the foreign ministers meeting by holding a summit, the Arab League said.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh condemned the attack as a "barbaric aggression" and called for an emergency Arab summit to be held to discuss it, Yemen's state news agency Saba reported.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora also condemned Israel's "latest massacres" in Gaza and appealed in a statement to the United Nations and its secretary-general to take swift measures to end the Israeli attacks. |
