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Qatari minister discusses normalization with Iraq |
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May 22, 2000
CAIRO, MAY 21 (AP) - Proposals for an Arab reconciliation with Iraq were the main issue in Sunday's talks between Qatar's foreign minister and Egypt's president.
"We are collectively developing some ideas which will be later presented to the international community," Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, the Qatari minister, told reporters after the meeting with President Hosni Mubarak.
No details of the proposals have yet emerged, but last week Sheik Hamad told a seminar in Kuwait that its government should normalize relations with Iraq and get over memories of Iraq's seven-month occupation in 1990-91.
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah replied that Iraq must first comply with all U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Among other things, the resolutions call for the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, the payment of war reparations and accounting for about 600 persons who went missing in Kuwait during the occupation.
Sheik Hamad said Sunday the proposals would be considered by other Arab leaders and then submitted to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
He stressed that only the U.N. Security Council could lift the sweeping sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Iraq claims to have fulfilled the council's resolutions, but United Nations weapons inspectors have accused Baghdad of failing to make a full disclosure about its weapons programs.
Egypt has a growing trade with Iraq under the U.N. oil-for-food program, but has shunned a request to restore full diplomatic relations.
Four Gulf Arab states - Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - have reopened their embassies in Baghdad in recent years, but Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose territory was also invaded during the 1991 Gulf War, have not restored relations.
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