The Islamic Summit: Top priorities were Syria, Mali and Palestine crisis

By African Bulletin on February 7, 2013

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The 12^th edition of the Islamic Summit hold in Egypt, has urged Syrian opposition forces and members of President Bashar Assad’s regime whose hands are not tainted by violence to hold talks to try to resolve the nation’s bloody civil war.

At the end of a two-day summit in Cairo, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation said that such talks could help achieve the “aspirations of the Syrian people for democratic reforms and change.”

The statement did not call on Assad to step down, but the summit exposed conflicting views among Muslim and Arab nations about the Syrian civil war. In the past, many nations at the summit, including Egypt, have demanded that the Syrian leader step aside.

Egypt’s Islamist president sharply criticized Assad’s embattled regime in his address to the summit, but did not directly call for the Syrian leader to leave as he had in past comments.

The Syrian government, he said, “must read history and grasp its immortal message: It is the people who remain and those who put their personal interests before those of their people will inevitably go.”

The summit also witnessed the first visit of an Iranian president to Egypt in more than three years, as Egypt’s Islamist government aimed for warmer relations with Iran.

In a goodwill gesture, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in remarks carried by Egypt’s official news agency that Iran will cancel visa requirements for Egyptian tourists and merchants.

“Lifting visas for merchants and tourists coming from Egypt to Iran, will be announced,” he was quoted by MENA as saying. “Every day we will take steps forward.”

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Cairo reflected Egypt’s attempts to strike an independent foreign policy and reassert Egypt’s historic regional leadership role following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a close U.S. ally who shared Washington’s deep suspicions of Tehran.

Meanwhile, Iran seeks warmer relations with Egypt as a way to break its international isolation and win a heavyweight ally.

Islamic summit backs Mali government, omits France

Leaders of Muslim nations declared support on Thursday for the unity and territorial integrity of Mali and condemned terrorism in the west African state but said nothing of French military intervention to drive out Islamist fighters.

A resolution adopted at a two-day summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation backed the deployment of an international military mission in Mali under African leadership and called for a roadmap for presidential and parliamentary elections.

The omission of any mention of France reflected embarrassment over the recourse to a former colonial power in a Muslim country, even though the 57-member OIC condemned “terrorism and extremism and attacks on historic sites in Mali”.

Paris sent troops and warplanes last month at the request of the Malian government to stop al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters that had captured the north of the country advancing towards the capital, Bamako, and help Malian forces retake northern towns.

Senegalese President Macky Sall, the outgoing chairman of the OIC, praised the French action in his speech on Wednesday but other countries were reluctant to make reference to it.

French and Malian forces are still fighting the rebels in the Sahara outside northern Mali’s biggest town after a lightning advance in which French officials say hundreds of fighters were killed. One French helicopter pilot was killed on the first day of the intervention.

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