28 March 2004	Sunday	06 Safar 1425

TUNIS: Arab foreign ministers here on Saturday sought to prevent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from sidelining their plans for political reform, amid fears that Washington is trying to set the agenda for democratic change.

In preparation for an Arab leaders' summit in the Tunisian capital on Monday, the ministers began another round of talks that delegates said were to focus on an Egyptian-Jordanian proposal for reform and another document on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Their meeting followed a stormy session on Friday in which delegates said the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese delegates opposed the reform plan because they insisted the conflict with Israel should take top billing at the summit.

The three parties, which have yet to sign peace treaties with Israel, were enraged over Israel's assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Egypt and Jordan, which are sponsoring the reform plan, do have peace treaties with the Jewish state.

However, an ad hoc committee spent much of the night and Saturday morning drafting a compromise wording that would be acceptable to all sides, a committee member said.

Yemeni and Qatari ideas have been incorporated into the Egyptian-Jordanian reform document, the member said, without giving details.

The proposed title, "Arab Plans for Reform", appears to have been watered down to "Arab Ideas on Reforms", a senior official said.

Analysts said many Arab governments want to draft "homegrown" plans for reform amid fears that US pressure for political change, embodied in its "Greater Middle East Initiative", could eventually lead to their ouster.

Some Arab delegates want the summit to limit itself to adopting a firm position on Israel that demands an Israeli withdrawal from Arab territory occupied since 1967.

But countries backing the Egyptian-Jordanian document insist that settling the Arab-Israeli dispute must "go hand in hand with reform", another senior Arab official said.

Officials said the Egyptian document covers "all basic freedoms, women's rights, civil liberties, legal reform, economic modernization and the promotion of knowledge".

It will be up to each country to pursue change at its own pace, they added.

The reform proposal includes plans to set up a committee - made up of two representatives from each country - to carry out its aims and give it "credibility", a senior Arab official said. It will have six months to draft a formula for carrying out the reforms, he added.

Another delegate said the reform document had "enough momentum to be adopted, but the assassination of Sheikh Yassin has changed the atmosphere at the summit".

Other potential dampeners were the decisions by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Issa al Khalifa to stay away from Tunis for unexplained reasons, as well as predictions in Riyadh of failure.

Standing in for them will be Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal and Bahrain's Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa.

The Saudi newspaper Al Riyadh has appeared to substantiate the theory that Saudi Arabia, which had planned to put forward a joint plan for Arab League reform, was put off by an abundance of proposals not only on league reform but also on internal change and the vexed issue of Arab-Israeli peace.

Arab summits will remain doomed so long as some countries fail to take a pan-Arab, rather than unilateral, approach, and in the absence of regional leadership "along the lines of German-French leadership of the European Union", the daily said.-AFP