Iraq on Monday urged Arabs to declare a holy war or jihad against their own leaders to avenge the failure to agree action at the Arab summit in Cairo.
The call came in a communiqué published in Monday's press after a meeting Sunday night of Iraq's highest body, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), and the ruling Baath party under the chairmanship of President Saddam Hussein.
After reviewing the results of the summit which closed Sunday, they called on Arab masses "to step up the struggle and the jihad in every town and through all means to take vengeance on (their) leaders, above all Saudi Arabia and their confederates in the plot".
The summit was "weak" and suspect", the communiqué said, describing the outcome as "poisoned and murderous swords brandished against the values of the great faith of the Arab nation".
The Iraqi leadership accused certain Arab figures, without naming them of having turned into "official agents of the enemy ... to harm, in the name of the United States and Zionism, the Arab masses".
The agents would be "swept away by the anger of the people in revolt," the statement promised.
Iraq's number two Ezzat Ibrahim, who stood in for Saddam at Iraq's first Arab summit since the 1991 Gulf War sparked by its invasion of Kuwait, said Sunday his country had drawn up its reservations over the outcome.
"Iraq's position on the Palestinian cause is clear: Iraq calls for efforts towards the liberation of Palestine by a jihad (holy struggle).
"It is only by a jihad that we can recover Arab rights in Palestine and in the other occupied Arab territories," said Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's decision-making RCC, directing the holy war at Israel.
Arab leaders threw their financial and moral weight behind the Palestinian uprising and threatened to cut ties with Israel, but there has been widespread disappointment in the Arab press that real immediate action was not agreed.
The summit was convened in response to Palestinian-Israeli clashes that have cost more than 130 lives since September 28 when Israel's hawkish opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited a hotly disputed holy site in Jerusalem – BAGHDAD (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
