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DAKAR, Senegal: Muslim leaders and United Nations
(UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called at the start of an Islamic
summit here Thursday for Israel to halt attacks on Palestinian
civilians and for an end to “Islamophobia” by the West.
But new tensions between Chad and
Sudan cast a shadow over the start of the 57-nation Organization of
the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting amid new efforts by the UN
chief and the Senegalese hopes to bring the bitter rivals together.
UN Secretary-General Ban renewed
his condemnation of Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians in
his speech to the 11th OIC summit.
“Israel’s disproportionate
and excessive use of force has killed and injured many civilians,
including children. I condemn these actions and call on Israel to
cease such attacks,” Ban told an audience that included
Palestine’s President Mahmud Abbas.
“At the same time, I also
condemn the rocket attacks directed against Israel and call for the
immediate cessation of such acts. They serve no purpose, endanger
Israeli civilians and bring misery to the Palestinian people,” he
added.
There has been a sharp escalation
in violence since the end of February in which more than 130
Palestinians were killed, including dozens of militants, and five
Israelis, including four soldiers.
Senegal’s President Abdoulaye
Wade, head of the OIC for the next year, said he will make efforts
to end the Middle East conflict his number one priority.
Wade also urged a ceasefire but
called on Israel to end “all of its illegal activities in the
occupied territories . . . the blind repression inflicted on the
Palestinian people.”
Many of the leaders at the summit
had other conflicts in their territory or nearby to worry about.
Afghanistan’s President Hamid
Karzai was preoccupied with a car bomb in Kabul that killed six
people. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also a key figure
at the summit as he confronts tensions with the United States over
its nuclear program.
“We are called upon to summon
our potentials to deal with overdue and chronic issues that continue
to plague our lives,” OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu
told the summit, citing conflicts involving members Iraq, Lebanon,
Somalia, Comoros and Afghanistan.
Highlighting the troubles that
have beset its members, Chad accused rebels backed by neighboring
Sudan of crossing the border to launch an offensive as Chad’s
President Idriss Deby Itno attended the Dakar meeting.
The rebels denied they had
launched any offensive however and Sudan described the allegations
as “complete nonsense.”
On the eve of the summit, Wade
had sought to bring together Deby and Sudan’s President Omar al-Beshir
for talks on ending bitter rivalry between the two.
But Beshir failed to turn up at
the meeting, which also included the UN chief. The Senegalese leader
said Beshir blamed “a headache” for his absence.
A meeting between Deby and Beshir
started Thursday amid widespread doubts that any progress would be
made. Chad and Sudan have made five previous accords but at times
come close to war in the past five years.
The diplomatic tensions diverted
attention from the OIC leadership’s efforts to reform the body
with a new charter and its campaign against
“Islamophobia”—attacks and threats against Muslims and what it
considers insults against the Islamic faith in the West.
The OIC wants western nations to
clamp down harder on what it considers anti-Islamic gestures such as
the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed in
Denmark and the looming release of an anti-Islamic film by far-right
Dutch Parliament Member Geert Wilders.
Freedom of speech should not
reach the point of attacking or showing disrespect for others’
points of view, said Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud
al-Faisal in one of many speech which condemned “defamation” of
Islam.
The UN chief joined the leaders
in expressing disquiet.
“Millions of Muslims around the
world want this summit to assure them that we are defending the
collective interest against the defamation of the Prophet Mohammed
and Muslims in general,” said Arab League Secretary-General Amr
Moussa.
--AFP
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