President Clinton and leaders from 26 other nations declared global war against international terrorists on Wednesday but produced few new ideas about how to wage it.
Convening in the shadow of the mountain range where God is said to have handed down the 10 Commandments to Moses, the meeting dubbed the Summit of the Peacemakers pledged new support for the crippled Middle East peace process and promised a strategy to combat those who arm, fund and support terrorists.
Despite pre-summit assurances that the session would produce concrete measures, the final communique was devoid of specific ways to combat terror. Instead, the leaders called for creation of a working group to make recommendations in coming weeks.
But even without specific new initiatives, participants described the hastily arranged summit as symbolically significant because it marked an unprecedented gathering of 13 moderate Arab states and 14 other nations in solidarity with Israel after the Jewish state suffered a disasterous and deadly wave of terrorism.
“From around the world, we have come to the Sinai to deliver one simple, unified message: Peace will prevail,” said Clinton, who was co-chairman of the conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“This summit is unprecedented in the history of the Middle East. It would have been inconceivable just a few short years ago. It stands as proof and promise that this region has changed for good.”
One possibility discussed by the summit participants was an “anti-terrorism Interpol,” an international center and computer databank for police and intelligence agencies from various countries to share information, collaborate on investigations and coordinate action, a senior U.S. diplomat said.
After the five-hour meeting at this Red Sea resort, Clinton traveled to Tel Aviv, where he offered his condolences to Israelis and restated staunch U.S. support for their nation in the wake of a wave of suicide bombings that have killed 58 people since Feb. 25.
“You are not alone,” Clinton told them. “The United States stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”
The president went on to Jerusalem for the night, where he is to hold meetings with Israeli leaders Thursday and visit the grave of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated at a peace rally by an Israeli extremist opposed to his peace initiative.
The Clinton administration’s message, hammered home in Sharm El-Sheikh and again in Tel Aviv, was that no matter how many suicide bombers launch attacks against Israelis, the peace process will go on and world leaders will not allow them to derail it.
The impetus for the summit came from Clinton, with key political support in the Arab world provided by Mubarak, who pointed out that the summit site “was the theater of many battles in the unhappy past” in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“Today, it has become the living symbol of a new era of peace and coexistence,” Mubarak said in his concluding statement, calling the conference a “big success.”
Syria, along with its ally Lebanon, rebuffed U.S. pressure to show up and renounce terrorism, embarrassing the White House and disappointing Israel. Iran, Iraq and Sudan, branded by the U.S. as sponsors of terrorism, were not invited.
Aboard Air Force One en route to Sharm El-Sheikh, Clinton was accompanied by King Hussein of Jordan, whom he thanked for helping organize the summit and getting “quite a remarkable array of people” to come from the Arab world.
The leaders included the kings of Jordan and Morocco, presidents of Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, senior emissaries from Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Yemen, and foreign ministers from Algeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.
Never before have so many senior Arab leaders from so many Mideast nations met in the same room with a leader of Israel, observers said.
Bolstered by other world leaders, including Russian President Boris Yeltsin and UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 29 delegation heads delivered speeches for nearly three hours around a green felt table in the Movenpick Hotel.
“The twilight of wars is still red with blood, yet its sunset is inevitable and imminent,” Israel’s Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared in remarks that began with an emotional tribute to two 12-year-old Israeli boys whose friendships and lives were tragically cut short by a suicide bomber.
“The Middle East is on the verge of a new day–better and more promising. Many barriers which separated Israel from its neighbors are gone. Yesterday’s enemies are gathered here today as partners in the battle for a different tomorrow.”
The final summit communique expressed support for the need to continue implementation of the Palestinian self-rule agreement with Israel, and the need to fund it from abroad.
It also called for better coordination and global efforts to pre-empt terror attacks, punish those who commit them and prevent nations from giving terrorists safe haven, arms and funding. There was no specific condemnation of Iran, despite U.S. and Israeli urging.
The summit was not without differences. A number of speakers, including Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, tempered their condemnations of terrorist attacks against Israelis by also denouncing Israeli violence.
He started by condemning the massacre of Palestinian Muslims in a Hebron mosque by a Jewish settler in 1994 and then denounced the terrorist bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, obliquely referring to the latter city as “the occupied territories.” Jerusalem is claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians as their capital.
And Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was joined by Mubarak and other Arab leaders in his appeal to Israel to lift the closure imposed on 465 Palestinian communities by Israel in its crackdown on Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Arafat vowed to continue his own pursuit of terrorist fugitives, but he said Israel’s siege had “reached the extent of starvation” and resulted in the re-occupation of some Palestinian self-rule areas by Israeli troops.
Clinton told a post-summit news conference that Israel is already lifting the siege enough to permit food and medicine into Gaza and other self-rule areas.
But he noted that what Palestinians view as collective punishment, Israelis see as “an elemental security measure at a time when it’s hard to tell who may be wrapped in plastique.”
Still, the overwhelming mood of the summit was upbeat, and both Peres and Arafat gained a much needed boost in their lagging efforts to rally their peoples behind the peace process and to move forward as partners again.
