Middle East situation/Palestine question – Chairman’s statement/9th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference – Letter from Qatar

    Letter dated 6 March 2003 from the Permanent Representative of Qatar

to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

I have the honour to transmit to you herewith the text of the statement made by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, in his capacity as Chairman of the ninth session of the Islamic Summit Conference, at the second emergency session of the Islamic Summit, held in Doha, State of Qatar, on 5 March 2003 (see annex).

I should be grateful if you would have the text of the present letter and its annex circulated as a document of the General Assembly, under agenda items 31, 35, 36 and 77, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser
Ambassador
Permanent Representative

    Annex to the letter dated 6 March 2003 from the Permanent Representative

of Qatar to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

[Original: Arabic]

 In the name of God, The Merciful, The Compassionate

  Praise be to God and blessings and peace be upon his Prophet, his Kinsfolk and Companions.

 Your Majesties and Highnesses,

 Your Excellencies,

  Your Excellency the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,

 Honourable Audience,

  I greet you with the best of greetings, the greeting of Islam. May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.

  It gives me pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the people and Government of the State of Qatar, in your country and among your brothers and kinsfolk.

 The extraordinary circumstances witnessed by our Muslim nation at this difficult and complicated juncture made it incumbent upon us to meet in this emergency session to discuss the complex situation facing us, which threatens grave consequences and repercussions for the security and stability of the whole world.

  We are meeting at a time when threats are mounting and military escalation is building up towards a regional confrontation whose possible results and effects for the region and the world are difficult to control.

  At the same time, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories is deteriorating incessantly and our Palestinian brethren are being subjected to endless suffering at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces, whose oppressive practices cannot be justified or overlooked.

  These situations present major challenges for us. We have to confront them, raising the level of our joint action in order to tackle them and limit their possible negative impacts on our Ummah (nation) and peoples.

  We are not here to pretend that we can make an international political or strategic decision which will direct and command the course of these developments. Yet we certainly can influence the course of such a decision and its possible results and effects, provided that we act together, unify our positions, and adhere to our objectives which are dictated by the common priorities and interests and the principles and values that bind us as one Muslim nation. This endeavour to unify our positions and adopt concerted and harmonized policies towards the crucial issues currently facing our nation represents the least we can do. Indeed, it is the least that our responsibilities and duties towards our countries and peoples require us to do.

  Today our choice in respect of Iraq is not only between supporting a peaceful political solution or dealing with the outcome of the development of events. In our opinion, it is a matter of what we can do so that Iraq can get out of this crisis in a way that will spare it and us a costly price or irremediably grave damage, the consequences of which could never be overcome regardless of how good our intentions might be.

  In all our actions, we should focus our efforts on exhausting all peaceful means to solve this question out of our conviction that peace is the difficult challenge which our States should take up. Any other outcome would lead to creating more crises, conflicts and sufferings, which would expose the whole region to dangers the extent of which only God knows.

  That is why we welcomed Iraq’s acceptance of Security Council resolution 1441 (2002) and its cooperation in implementing it. We hope that cooperation will continue, as it is an important step towards a peaceful solution to the present problem.

  In this connection, we reaffirm the necessity of maintaining Iraq’s independence, unity, territorial integrity and of non-interference in its internal affairs. We also reiterate our firm and principled position regarding the necessity of respecting the sovereignty, its security and territorial integrity of the State of Kuwait and of non-interference in its internal affairs.

 Your Majesties and Highnesses,

 Your Excellencies,

  Your Excellency the Secretary-General,

 Honourable Audience,

  The Palestinian question is passing through a very difficult and critical phase. We hoped that President Yasser Arafat could attend our meeting. But Israel’s continued intransigence and insolence have regrettably made that impossible. The Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories is still going on, the sieges and killings perpetrated daily against innocent civilians continue despite repeated condemnations and appeals, because of Israel’s intransigence, its neglect of its commitments to the international community and its insistence on achieving security and stability through the use of military force, taking advantage of the regional and international conditions to ruin the opportunities for peace.

  Allow me to address in utterly, sincere and candid frankness, a message to the pillars of the international community in general and the United States of America in particular, that the continuation of this human tragedy is a stigma in the history of mankind and today’s civilization; that security, peace and stability in the region cannot materialize without a peaceful, just and durable settlement based on the implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions, all of which recognize the right of the Palestinian people to their legitimate national rights, as well as the right to self-determination and to establish their independent State on their national soil, with Jerusalem as its capital, and the necessity of Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967. Israel cannot always remain above the resolutions which enshrine international legality and the principles of international law.

  Here we stress once again the importance of the resolutions adopted by the Ninth Summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference regarding the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the creation of an area free of such weapons in the Middle East, and we urge the international community to ask Israel to submit all its nuclear installations to the International Atomic Energy Agency, since that is crucial to establishing a comprehensive and just peace in the region.

 Your Majesties and Highnesses,

 Your Excellencies,

  Your Excellency the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,

 Honourable Audience,

  The present juncture requires that we look forward to the future and have the ability to influence it, without looking back to the failures of the past and their bitter memories, so that our future generations can be more fortunate in building a new world in which peace, stability, freedom and equality prevail.

  May God bestow success on us and guide us along the path of common good.

 May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.

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