On June 29, the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt hosted a luncheon at the Cairo Marriott on the subject of “The Future of Arab American Relations: Time for a New Outlook", featuring Arab League Secretary-General and former Foreign Minister H.E. Amre Moussa.

AmCham President Taher Helmy spoke, first welcoming the many eminent personages in attendance, including government ministers and diplomats, along with a delegation of senior congressional staffers from the US.

He went on to talk about the many challenges – political, economic and social – currently facing the Middle East. “Yesterday, Iraq became a sovereign state, the Iraqi government took the reigns of power,” he said. “But to what extent will the new government really run the country?” Issues of security, he added, would remain paramount. Saudi Arabia, too, he pointed out, was undergoing a state of turmoil – both politically and economically.

Questions also remain regarding the US-backed Israeli initiative aimed at withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Helmy noted. “Can the Gaza Plan really represent a new beginning in the Palestine-Israel conflict?” he asked.

The issue of regional reform, he said, was another momentous issue, which, in turn, had produced a host of fresh questions, such as, “Will reforms be adopted by governments in the region? Will the region be able to reinvent itself – from within?” And, finally, “What role will the Arab League play in meeting these numerous challenges?”

Helmy then introduced Moussa to the audience, calling him – in reference to Moussa’s tenure as foreign minister – a “diplomat able to earn the respect of world leaders.”
The Arab League chief, Amre Moussa started by thanking sponsors and AmCham for making the event possible.

Following Helmy’s earlier theme of uncertainty, Moussa declared that a big question mark hung over the US relationship with the Arab world. “I’m a man who believes it’s in our best interest to have the best possible relations with the US. This entails various efforts on the part of both Washington and the Arabs,” he said. “The current situation, though, will only serve to bring havoc to the Middle East and effect security throughout the world.”

Moussa went on to recall how, upon America’s victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, most observers hoped to see the advent of a new international system founded on democracy and human rights. “In the early 1990s, we hoped to see a new order, free from hegemonic superpower policies,” he said. In the Middle East, the apogee of this sea change to the global order was represented by the Madrid conference, convened by the US with the aim of finally solving the Israel-Palestine dispute equitably.

But these negotiations broke down after Oslo, said Moussa, as the Israelis were “encouraged to do anything they wanted, while the Arabs were, on the ground, offered very little.” By the late 1990s, he continued, “US support for Israel made us abandon the hope of a just settlement. We didn’t know then that we’d soon see something even worse.”

With the coming of the George W. Bush administration to the White House, Washington’s support for Tel Aviv’s heavy-handed policies in the occupied territories became total. “Israel has now acquired impunity in international affairs,” he said.

Moussa went on to warn of “a certain religious dogma” that has gained influence in the US, and is largely the reason for Washington’s adoption of the Israeli line vis-à-vis Middle East policy.

The Arab League head cited recent examples of US partiality towards Israel, including written guarantees given by Bush to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assuring that, amongst other things, Israel wouldn’t be expected to return to pre-1967 armistice lines. “Additionally, the US congress recently adopted a resolution supporting this major illegal commitment, which throws away the major tenets of international law prohibiting the acquisition of land by force. This is in contravention to UN resolution 242,” on which eventual peace talks were always expected to be based.

While Moussa said he was “gratified” by Bush’s earlier vision of a two-state solution to the conflict, “this has yet to materialize,” he said. “Let us hope against hope that US Middle East policy will be re-visited, or all the tension will continue.”

On Iraq, and the recent “handover” of sovereignty to a US-appointed Iraqi government, Moussa said, “I wish the new government well. I hope it will rise to the occasion. Nevertheless, the current chaos doesn’t bode well. A strategy is required.” He went on to note that, “The restoration of sovereignty is one issue. Full withdrawal of the US military is another issue. As long as there are foreign forces in the country, there are going to be resistance attacks.”

Ultimately, he said, “We need a timetable. A national conference should be convened in Iraq, for Iraqis. For it is the Iraqi people themselves who, in the final analysis, will determine the fate of the country.” Such a convention, he said, “should include all political forces in Iraq,” and went on to call for greater cooperation among members of the Arab League to this end.

In terms of regional reform, a divisive issue lately within the league, Moussa called it “a must.” “Democracy is the key – democracy defined by the ballot box, open society, transparency and respect for basic human rights,” he said, pointing out that the league, when it last met in Tunis, had adopted a general declaration of reform.

As for Washington’s much touted “Greater Middle East Initiative,” or GMEI, proposed in February, Moussa complained that the controversial document was much too unclear. “It was very vague, riddled with question marks,” he said. “Our questions were centered on this notion of a ‘Greater Middle East,’ not on reform issues.”

A new-and-improved reform initiative, supposedly more palatable to Arab tastes, which came out of June’s G8 summit, “was more readable and easy to understand. For once, the US was open to our points of view, and the new document was free of the points that aroused the angry attention of those from this region. This better document received a better reception,” Moussa said.

In regards to reform of the Arab League in particular, the league chief explained that reform was “here to stay, and now at the core of the Arab League. He went on to point out two important reformist resolutions that came out of the Tunis meeting. The first was the above-mentioned general resolution aimed at the furtherance of economic and social reform, which, Moussa said, “We will be implementing as soon as possible.”

The second involves the modification of the Arab League charter, and calls for the eventual creation of an Arab parliament; a court of justice; a joint security mechanism; an Arab investment bank; an Arab cultural council; and a sanctions regime for cases of non-implementation.

Moussa noted that, on the popular level, most Arabs continued to be concerned about the Palestine and Iraq files, adding that, “It is to no avail for religious trends to ally themselves solely with one side.”

In conclusion, he said that many questions would be answered in 2005, a year in which Iraqis have been promised free elections (scheduled for January) and Palestinians have been promised a state (according to Bush’s “roadmap”).

The Arab League secretary general wound up his speech by again urging the US to “re-visit its Middle East policy.”

Moussa then briefly answered several questions from the audience, on topics such as the war on terrorism, the influence of the “neoconservatives” in Washington and the proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

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