Terrorism rapped

Nouakchott : A 22-nation Arab summit tackling the region’s crises was cut back to a single day yesterday due to the absence of the heavyweight leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stayed at home because of “a busy domestic schedule” while Saudi King Salman’s no-show was due to “health reasons”, an Arab League source said.

Opening the talks, Egypt’s premier Sherif Ismail called in the name of Sisi for “an Arab strategy of struggle against terrorism.”

“We must recast the religious language that terrorist elements exploit to their own ends to sow terror, death and destruction,” he said.

Terrorists were deflecting Islam’s message of peace, he added.

Mauritania’s head of state Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who is hosting the summit, also slammed the “blind violence of terrorists” as well as foreign interventions that feed instability in the Arab world.

The summit, originally scheduled for two full days, is to focus primarily on security and on plans for a joint force across a region fraught with tension, notably in Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

Deputy Prime Minister Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa represented Bahrain during the summit.

Also present were the heads of state of Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Comoros and Djibouti as well as the premiers of Lebanon and Libya.

It is the first Arab League summit hosted by Mauritania since it joined the organisation in 1973.

The Mauritanian president also called for fresh efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that regional instability would continue until the issue was settled.

Arab foreign ministers meeting ahead of the summit on Saturday urged a “definitive solution” to the conflict and welcomed a French and Egyptian initiative to help revive dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.