Tunis hosts 30th Arab League Summit
MUSCAT: The 30th Arab League Summit was held in Tunis on Sunday with a number of Arab leaders and senior officials tackling some of the region’s biggest challenges.
Attendees included UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
Tunisian President Béji Kayed Sibsi, whose country is chairing the Arab League Council, said, “The Arab dimension is of utmost importance to Tunisian politics, emanating from its belief in the importance of advancing the Arab nation’s reality and its various contributions over time”.
“It is unreasonable to continue the Arab nation’s status quo, as it sees humanitarian tragedies, terrorism and disruption of development.
“These issues call for working to regain the initiative in facing our common circumstances and challenges by ourselves, as well as overcoming differences and developing cooperation,” President Sibsi stated.
He called on the gathering to be the “Determination and Solidarity Summit”, because what the Arabs are facing is too great to be addressed individually.
King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein of Jordan stated, “We meet today and many of the difficulties and challenges of our peoples call upon us to be at the level of the aspirations of our peoples.
Our people who await decisions that fulfill their hopes and affirm the unity of our destiny and our common future.
“Especially the young people who make up the majority of them, deserve our work for a better tomorrow.”
“The Palestinian issue will remain on the top of the Kingdom’s concerns until the Palestinian people get all their legitimate rights, mainly an independent state on the 1967 border with East Jerusalem as its capital,” King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia stated.
Other topics of discussion included Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan Heights, Yemen and Libya among others.