The Arab League said on Friday expelling Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be disastrous, and there were numerous calls around the region for like-minded countries to intervene to prevent his removal.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan also warned on Friday that it would be “unwise” to expel Yasser Arafat, following the Israeli government’s decision to banish the Palestinian leader.
“It would be unwise to expel Arafat,” Annan told journalists here when asked about his reaction to the decision taken in principle by the Israeli security cabinet late on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Arab League warned that Arafat’s expulsion would have “disastrous consequences across the region and further afield,” Egypt’s official Mena news agency reported.
“It would herald the death of all efforts to bring about peace,” Hisham Yussef was quoted as saying.
The international community must shoulder some of the blame in the “aggressive policies” of the Israeli government, he added.
“Such acts are not countered with enough firmness by the international community”.
On Thursday night, Israel’s security cabinet approved in principle Arafat’s forcible expulsion, blaming him for being an “absolute obstacle to all attempts at reconciliation.”
However, it did not say if, when or now this would happen.
If Israel acts on its decision, it will pave the way “to extremism and the desire for revenge”, Yussef warned.
“Those who talk about the suffering engendered by violence in the region have to realise that such a step would create a lasting desire for revenge.
The spokesman called on the United Nations Security Council to meet to discuss the “serious dangers” of Israel’s decision.
Meanwhile, the permanent Palestinian representative to the pan-Arab body, Mohammed Sobeih, said the United States was largely responsible for the Israeli decision, Mena reported.
“Washington, as a sponsor of the [Israeli-Palestinian] peace process, shares a large part of the responsibility for this development, in that it allows Israel to think it acts always with American approval,” he was quoted as saying.
“It is time that the US made it clear that it will not allow such wrongful Israeli acts,” he added.
Sobeih called on the quartet that drafted the road map — the US, European Union, United Nations and Russia — to take immediate action in the Middle East to end “this serious deterioration”.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, on an official visit to Rome, has sent an urgent message to US President George Bush on the matter, television reported in Cairo.
Speaking Thursday at a news conference with Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi before the decision was announced, Mubarak said the possibility of Arafat’s removal would be a “monumental mistake”.
His foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, called on Israel to reverse its decision and welcomed Washington’s rejection of the move as “positive”.
Just before the Israeli announcement, US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said: “Our view on Mr. Arafat hasn’t changed. He is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
“At the same time we think it would not be helpful to expel him, because it would just give him another stage to play on,” he said.
For its part, Bahrain condemned Israel’s decision and said it was in contact with the Arab League to hammer out a joint Arab stand on the Israeli threat.
“The kingdom of Bahrain condemns the Israeli government’s decision in principle to expel President Yasser Arafat, who was elected by the Palestinian people,” said the official BNA news agency.
Such a move would hamper the peace process and would have “dire consequences on the situation in the Palestinian territories”, it quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying.
He urged the quartet to step in to prevent Israel from carrying out its threat.
In Sanaa, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry warned that Israel would plunge the Middle East into further bloodshed if it made good its threat to expel Arafat.
Arafat is “the leader of the Palestinian people and their legitimate president,” said a statement carried by the official Saba news agency. “Any action against him would be directed at the [entire] Palestinian people, who will not take it lying down.
“The reckless and extremist Israeli decision will have dire consequences” if it is carried out, the statement said.
The Yemeni government called on the international community, chiefly the US, to “intervene promptly to prevent the Israeli government from carrying out its threats against the Palestinian leader” and press it to sue for a “just and comprehensive peace”. — Sapa-AFP
Israelis threaten to exile Arafat