Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit has stressed the important role the 22-member organization can play in any Arab regional order, which he said would not succeed without a solution to the Palestinian cause.
“We have to revive the League of Arab states and the Arab security system as the core of the Arab region,” said Aboul Gheit as part of a panel of discussion titled “The Quest For Regional Hegemony: Preventing Escalation” in the 4th edition of the Mediterranean Dialogues held in Rome.
“There has to be a settlement for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” he said.
“The regional neighbors have to respect the integrity of Arab territory. Iran should think deeply on reversing its attitude and behavior in so many issues in relation to Arab countries,” he told the panel.
“If that achieved, there would be a new regional order allowing the League of Arab States to be the core to engage in whatever arrangements” there are, he added.
“The destruction of the Arab world allowed others to seek intervention or hegemony,” he said in response to a question by the panel chair on what kind of overall balance could be sketched in the region in order to promote stability.
“Everything in my opinion is premature. We cannot jump to arrangements in the region without understanding what is happening in” it, Aboul Gheit said.
He also described the Arab region as the core of the Middle East.
According to its website, Mediterranean Dialogues is the annual high-level initiative promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and ISPI (Italian Institute forInternational Political Studies) in Rome.
The event aims at drafting a “positive agenda” for the Mediterranean by stimulating debate and promoting new ideas, rethinking traditional approaches and addressing shared challenges at both the regional and the international level.
