CAIRO: There’s a new voice rising above the bustle of downtown Cairo.After years of paralysis, the Arab League seems to have sprung to life, fired up by a chief who has steered the organization for the past year through the greatest Middle East crisis in decades amid rising Israeli-Palestinian violence.
But Middle East analysts say the organization, which is about as old as the Palestinian problem itself, remains hampered by deep-rooted divisions among its 22 members who are reluctant to give the grouping more political muscle.
Against this backdrop, they say the League’s future role might not lie so much in forging a unified Arab political front, but in providing a forum to help Arabs meet the economic challenges of globalization and competition from other blocs.
The fiery Amr Moussa, Egypt’s former foreign minister, took over the job as the sixth secretary-general in May last year. He replaced another former Egyptian foreign minister, the genteel Esmat Abdel-Meguid, accused by his detractors of inaction.
On the first anniversary of taking over the job, analysts say the straight-talking Moussa has breathed new life into the League, forgoing the usual flowery language of Arab diplomacy and stepping up high-level contacts to promote Arab issues.
INTERNAL DISCORD: The halls of the League have echoed with disputes between members stretching from Morocco on the western Atlantic coast to Iraq in the east.
Their political systems range from republics to monarchies, but most involve some form of autocratic government with few democratic credentials.
The League itself has been used as a political football in the Arab spats over the Middle East peace process.
“There have been very few signs that Arab governments... would be willing to give the Arab League the autonomy and support it requires in order for it to be an effective forum of Arab debate and of formulation of common policies at the regional level,” said Cairo University’s Sayed.
Political pundits said Moussa was struggling to reform the bureaucracy of the League, which was founded in 1945 to help boot out colonial powers from Arab states and confront “the Zionist challenge”, which was thrown into sharp relief with the founding of Israel in 1948.—Reuters
