SEVILLE (Spain), March 20: Rabbis and imams from around the globe gathered in this southern Spanish city on Monday to discuss how to achieve mutual understanding and peace.

At round-table meetings, participants committed themselves to drawing up a concrete ‘action plan’ by the time their discussions end on Wednesday, particularly regarding education, said Cyril Dion of the Hommes de Parole (Men of their Word) foundation sponsoring the forum. Hommes de Parole is a peace foundation based in Paris.

The first congress in Brussels last year was simply about getting together, Dion said: “This year it’s about getting down to business.”

Some 20 participants from the Gaza Strip were attending.

Five Israeli youngsters were allowed to postpone their exams to come to Seville.

At the conference opening, they heard an organizers’ appeal to religious leaders to develop a common stand against extremism.

“Our religions have been taken hostage,” warned Andre Azoulay, an adviser to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, claiming that the extremists’ message was being heard all too widely.

Seville, once a centre of Islamic culture in Moorish Spain, had now been symbolically chosen to host this dialogue. “We have to measure up to our ancestors,” Azoulay stressed.

Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said the ‘moderate (Muslim) majority’ needed to speak out. “Why are you silent when (Al Qaeda leader Osama) Bin Laden allows himself to speak in Islam’s name?” he asked.

The imam of Gaza, Imad Al Falouji, said mutual understanding had to be built up. “We must engage in a responsible and serious dialogue,” he insisted.

Participants were set this week to draft detailed joint proposals which can be built on with later developments such as creation of an inter-religious international monitoring body.

The new forum has the support of the Spanish and Moroccan-backed Three Cultures Foundation, the Edmond de Rothschild and Ford foundations and the Kingdom Holding Company of Saudi Prince Al Walid Bin Talal. It is intended to give participants what is being described as an ‘open space’ to unveil their ideas.

At the opening ceremony Norway’s Grand Rabbi Michael Melchior, a member of the Israeli Knesset, expounded on his Mosaica initiative, launched in 2004 to give Jerusalem schoolchildren access to educational works designed to shatter stereotypical images which Muslims and Jews may have of each other.—AFP