Islamists Assail Israel, Talk Up Muslim Unity

An Islamic summit here ended Thursday with delegates endorsing a declaration that blasts Israel and condemns extremists who murder in the name of religion. But the meeting’s most notable outcome may have been the strides that Iran made in improving its relations with the Arab world.

Hosting the 55-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, Iranian leaders used the three-day extravaganza to publicly shed their nation’s past position of hostility toward Saudi Arabia and the conservative Arab states across the Persian Gulf.

The Iranian leaders displayed friendship toward Crown Prince Abdullah, their highest-ranking Saudi visitor since their 1979 Islamic revolution, and warmly received Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, whom Tehran once vilified for entering into peace accords with Israel. Iran also vowed to work at normalizing diplomatic ties with Egypt, a major U.S. ally in the region.

“The summit is a crystal-clear sign that, contrary to what the West is trying to portray, Iran is not isolated,” said Tehran’s English-language Iran News.

Improvements in relations between Iran and its Arab neighbors could prove to be a double-edged sword for the United States. On one hand, if tensions are lowered in the Persian Gulf, that could reduce the need for large U.S. forces to remain on standby in the area. On the other hand, any rapprochement between the Arab world and Iran could put more political and military pressure on a key U.S. ally, Israel.

“The danger now, as I see it, is that Iran is seeking legitimacy and is opening up its doors to its neighbors and even to the U.S., while our government [Israel] is leading us with enormous speed into splendid isolation--and that’s no joke,” one worried professor at Israel’s University of Haifa told the Jerusalem Post.

Washington now maintains about 20,000 military personnel in and around the Gulf to shield select Arab states from possible aggression by Iran or Iraq and to ensure the flow of oil from the region to the rest of the world. Iran, astride the Gulf’s northeastern side, argues that these U.S. forces should leave because nations in the region can best maintain their own stability and security.

The summit-closing declaration did not directly refer to any ouster of the United States from the Gulf but did call for the creation of a committee of Muslim experts to study the issue of the “solidarity and security of Islamic states.”

The declaration also glossed over some significant conflicts that still exist between Tehran and the Arab world over relations with Israel. Absent from the document was any mention of the U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace process, which Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called “unjust, arrogant, contemptuous and, finally, illogical” but which most Arab states have endorsed.

After meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami confirmed that Iran continues to oppose the peace process but said other countries were free to disagree. “We don’t impose our views on any country or person,” he said.

The final declaration was sharply critical of Israel for “state terrorism” and “expansionist policies” on occupied land. The statement repeated that Islamic countries are determined to gain control of Jerusalem, presently governed by Israel, and “restore the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people.”

The document condemned terrorism but made an exception for any groups’ struggle “against colonial or alien domination or foreign occupation.” The groups were not named. But, in other words, radical Islamic organizations such as Hezbollah in southern Lebanon or Hamas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank would not fall under the summit’s censure because they say they are fighting Israeli occupation.

But in a section of the declaration supported by Egypt, a country still reeling from the Nov. 17 massacre of 58 foreign visitors in Luxor, the summit stated that the murder of innocents is “forbidden in Islam” and said the international community should “deny asylum to terrorists [and] assist in bringing them to justice.” Muslim extremists claimed responsibility for the Luxor attack.

The declaration also criticized U.S. attempts to penalize countries doing business with Iran and Libya.

Khatami met twice in private with Abdullah during the summit, adding to speculation in some Arab newspapers that the heir to the Saudi throne might be asked by the Iranians to serve as an intermediary to help get the United States and Iran talking to each other again. But Mohammed Javad Zarif, an Iranian spokesman, said there had been no discussion of that.

The recently and popularly elected Iranian president also sat with another erstwhile antagonist, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. That session was the highest-level contact between Iran and Iraq since their 1980-88 war in which about 1 million people died.

In all, almost 30 heads of state and government leaders from Muslim countries stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia attended the summit. A leading Saudi newspaper, Asharq al Awsat, editorialized that all the talk was a good thing and expressed hope that Washington would soon join in the revived discussions with Iran.