CAIRO: The 162nd session of the Arab League Council kicked off on Sunday at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League in Cairo. The session was chaired by Yemen with the participation of Kuwait. Yemen’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League Ambassador Riyadh Al-Akbari called on the UN Security Council to issue a resolution under Chapter VII obligating Zionist occupation to stop its war on the Gaza Strip, pointing to the Security Council’s failure to put an end to the occupation’s violations against Palestinians.
He added that the meeting urged the international community and the Security Council to impose sanctions on the Zionist occupation and oblige it to comply with international laws and resolutions and the decisions of the International Court of Justice to stop the genocide and end the occupation and settlements. Al-Akbari pointed out that the Yemeni government condemned the occupation’s allegations regarding the ‘Philadelphi Corridor’ and expressed its full solidarity with Egypt and rejected the occupation’s statements regarding its attempt to establish a permanent presence in the corridor and the Rafah crossing.
He praised, in this regard, the mediation efforts undertaken by Egypt and Qatar at a time when the Zionist government is trying to dispel these efforts, stressing the need to strengthen joint Arab action, especially in light of its role in supporting the struggle of the Palestinians to obtain their rights, most notably the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on the 1976 territories with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Mauritania’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League (President of the previous session), Ambassador Hussein Sidi Abdullah Al-Dayeh, called on the international community and civil society organizations to move quickly and effectively redouble and unify efforts to immediately stop all Zionist crimes committed. He stressed the importance of providing food, medicine, and all the necessary requirements to assist the displaced, returning the displaced to their homes, and rebuilding and pressuring the Zionist occupation by all available means to implement the orders of the International Court of Justice and to recognize without delay the full membership of the State of Palestine in the United Nations.
Ambassador Al-Dayeh said that Mauritania assumed the presidency of the (161) session in light of unprecedented challenges, crises, and wars that put Arab national security before a real and fateful bet. The occupation launched a genocidal war since October 2023 against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and expanded to include all the occupied Palestinian territories, "which plunged the region into crises.
He added that "the successive events and developments in the Palestinian file proved that there is no alternative to granting the Palestinian people their inalienable rights, most notably their right to self-determination and recognition of their independent sovereign state on the "borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The session discusses the draft agenda, which includes several items on political, economic, social, legal, financial, and administrative issues, including the ‘Joint Arab Action’, which includes the report of the Secretary-General of the League between the (161) and (162) sessions. The draft agenda discusses an item on the Palestinian issue, the Arab conflict with Zionist occupation, activating the Arab Peace Initiative, Zionist developments and violations in the occupied city of Jerusalem, Arab water security, the occupation’s water theft in the occupied Arab territories, and the occupied Syrian Golan.
The meeting will also discuss a number of permanent items related to Arab affairs and national security, including developments in Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia; solidarity with Lebanon; Iran’s occupation of the three Emirati islands; navigation security and energy supplies in the Arabian Gulf region; and the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The draft agenda also includes an item related to international political affairs, which includes a number of topics, including the dangers of occupation to Arab national security and international peace and the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone and other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.
The officials also discuss social affairs, human rights, economic issues, maintaining national security, combating terrorism, developing the Arab system for combating terrorism, reforming and developing the League of Arab States, and reports of the standing committees for administrative, financial, legal, and human rights affairs. The permanent delegates are scheduled to submit the draft agenda and resolutions on the items on the (162) ministerial session of the Council.
Following the opening session, an introductory meeting is scheduled to be held between the permanent delegates and the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Cairo, Elena Panova, regarding the Future Summit scheduled to be held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 22 and 23. Kuwait’s delegation is headed by the Permanent Representative of Kuwait to the League of Arab States, Ambassador Talal Al-Mutairi. — KUNA