SOUTH African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will lead a delegation of ministers from the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to the Middle East to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the government announced on Tuesday.
”The delegation will discuss the decisions taken by the NAM regarding the Middle East and the situation in that region,” Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told reporters.
A three-day NAM ministerial meeting in the east coast city of Durban called on Monday for ”the immediate and full withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities.
A communiqué said the ministers expressed outrage and ”condemned the wilful killing, vast destruction and other atrocities committed by the Israeli occupying forces against the Palestinian people”.
Pahad said Dlamini-Zuma had been mandated as chair of the NAM to decide on the nature and composition of the delegation to visit the Middle East.
”In the process of negotiating this the minister will meet with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to decide on the most suitable dates to visit,” he said.
Dlamini-Zuma had not been mandated to talk to the Israeli government but it was expected she would have to have some contact because it was not possible to enter Palestine without passing through Israel, Pahad said.
The visit would not be a fact-finding tour, Pahad insisted.
”We know the facts, that something disastrous has happened in Jenin and the visit will be to express our absolute condemnation of what has happened in the occupied territories.” – Sapa