|
|
Senegal: Islamic Summit Fails to Meet Host's High Expectations
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Nation (Nairobi)
19 March 2008
Posted to the web 18 March 2008
Hamadou Tidiane
Dakar
"This is a repetition of an African Union summit", a young fellow journalist joked after he counted the massive presence of African heads of state, compared to the little representation of Arab leaders at the eleventh summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in the Senegalese capital last Thursday and Friday.
Indeed, 16 leaders out of the 25 who showed up in Dakar represented African nations.
Efforts of the Senegalese diplomacy ahead of the conference to use the Dakar summit to push for African causes - and particularly Arab investments in Africa - made it interesting for African leaders to be here.
African leaders attending the summit were: Gabon's El Hadji Omar Bongo, Togo's Faure Gnassingbe, Mamadou Tandja of Niger, Armando Guebuza, Mozambique, Abdullahi Yussuf, Somalia, Amadou Toumani Touré, Mali, Yahya Jammeh, The Gambia, Blaise Compaoré, Burkina Faso, Umaru Yar'Adua, Nigeria, Ismail Omar Guelleh, Djibouti, Ernest Baï Koroma, Sierrra leone, Idriss Déby, Chad, Omar Hassan el-Bashir, Sudan, Yayi Boni, Bénin, Abd'el aziz Bouteflika, Algeria and Joao Bernardo Vieira Guinea Bissau.
Among notable African leaders who did not show up was Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi.
For months and until a few days before the summit, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade stressed that his target was to have a level of participation never reached before at an OIC summit, publicly expressing his wish to see at least "between 37 and 40 leaders" in Dakar.
At the end, only his African peers he often criticises honoured him, while many of the Arab leaders shunned the summit, with one major absentee particularly noticed by almost everybody, diplomats and journalists alike.
A few weeks before the event and after a trip from Saudi Arabia, President Wade prided himself to have "personally" convinced King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud to come to Dakar for the summit and that he got a "firm promise" from the Saudi monarch to grace the occasion.
But, the Saudi king only sent his minister of Foreign affairs, Prince Saud-Al-Faisal.
Impact of resolutions
Though the remark of the fellow journalist comparing the OIC to the African Union was only prompted by the massive presence of African leaders, it could also be easily applied to the organisation's actual efficiency, its weak results, the little impact of its resolutions, almost four decades after it was created to defend the Muslim communities and the Islamic faith, to which at least 1.3 billion people around the world adhere.
The best illustration of this inefficiency is the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
"My priority as a chairman of our organisation will be solving the Israel-Palestine crisis", President Wade generously said after it was announced he has been elected chairman of the OIC.
From its inception in 1969, the 57 member grouping has always brought full and unwavering political support to the "Palestinian cause", but has been unable to solve the Middle-East crisis. It has similarly been unable to allow the Palestinian people to live in a "free and independent nation" of their own as successive meetings and resolutions has pledged to do. Dakar was no exception.
Both at the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as behind closed door sessions, Israel was lambasted and the Palestinian issue featured high in the Dakar declaration adopted by Muslim leaders after their two-day meeting.
"The leaders of the Muslim countries hereby renew their pledge to preserve world peace and security", the statement read, adding that the objective of the OIC from the beginning has always been "to ensure just and lasting peace in the Middle East and inalienable rights of the Palestinian People to establish an independent state within internationally guaranteed borders".
Using his newly inaugurated title as chairman of the OIC, the Senegalese president offered to "host in Senegal a congress of "all Palestinian organisations", so as to help them unify their positions. This, Mr Wade said, shall allow him to confidently mediate in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Mr Mahmood Abbas, the Palestinian leader who was in Dakar, has surely heard the proposal. Neither him no any other Muslim leader was heard publicly backing the call by President Wade to broker a peace deal in the decades long conflict.
|
The Turkish secretary general of the OIC, Dr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu did not also pay much attention to the proposal. He rather accused Israel and deplored "the successive crises fabricated by Israel to stall the peace process and to thwart the many peace plans and initiatives proposed by the international community".
For the OIC secretary general it has become necessary to "document the Israeli crimes" and to bring their "perpetrators" before an International criminal court.
However, based on the records of the organization and its past achieved results, very few observers believe that any of these statements and recommendations will be the source of a major breakthrough in what is currently happening in the Middle East, where an upsurge of violence have been noted lately urging Mahmood Abbas to suspend talks with Israel.
The summit should have put the Dafur crisis into its proper historical perspective by asking delegates from African and Arab countries to take a good look at the map of Africa and ask this simple question: How did it come about that all the countries on the northern part of Africa, from Mauritaania through Algeria all the way to Eastern part of Africa are in the hands of the Arab "brothers"? By answering this question, the summit would have concluded that the genocide and ethnic cleansing currently going on in Dafur is part of centuries old activities that Arab "brothers"... [Read Full Text]
Black Africa has never had leaders represent the black humanity. This expains why comercial slave trade wiped the blacks from North Africa. Black Kings from time immorial were willing participants in enslaving blacks. The White race outlawed slavery without any help from black kings or autorities. Colonialism was established with explicit approval of Black Kings who in most cases saw their positions reduced to Chiefs with no autority at all. The mordern crop of Black Presidents and Prime Ministers are following the old trend. For example, they steal money from their government treasuries and hide it outside Africa.I am not... [Read Full Text]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
