Ministers discuss crisis facing Muslims ahead of OIC summit

Ministers discuss crisis facing Muslims ahead of OIC summit

Salah Nasrawi, Associated Press/Jiddah, Saudi Arabia

Representatives of more than 50 Islamic countries met on Tuesday
ahead of a two-day summit, with delegates saying the world's
largest Islamic organization must reform if it is to deal with
the "great challenges and dangers" it faces.

Foreign ministers and senior officials of the 57 states of the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) opened discussions
to prepare for the summit, which begins on Wednesday and is
expected to forge a plan to reform the group and give it more
clout.

"The Muslim nation is facing great challenges and enormous
dangers targeting its cultural foundations and religious creeds,"
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in an opening
speech on Tuesday.

The summit "will forge a comprehensive plan to overcome the
obstacles that block the aspirations of our nation and
consolidate concepts and principles of tolerance and
intercultural dialog," he said.

Al-Faisal said Saudi King Abdullah, who called the meeting
which opens in Islam's holy city of Mecca on Wednesday and
continues in Jiddah on Thursday, was to propose a plan for reform
"spreading virtue, tolerance and brotherhood between people."

"We all have hope that the summit ... will enhance (the
Islamic countries') ranks and restore the self-confidence of the
Islamic world," the king said in statement carried by Saudi state
media.

The leaders are also expected to discuss plans to combat
terrorism, which has targeted many members of the OIC, as well as
the situation in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and
Afghanistan.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said his delegation would ask
the conference to condemn the violence in Iraq.

"This is not resistance. It is terrorism, and should be
condemned," he told The Associated Press on arrival.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari echoed that sentiment.
"We want the summit to come out with a crystal clear support of
the political process and a condemnation of terrorism," he said.
The insurgency in Iraq "is a crime against all Iraqis, it should
be condemned as strongly as possible."

Zebari said Iraq would not ask Islamic countries to send
troops to Iraq for policing or peacekeeping.

In his opening statement to the ministers on Tuesday, OIC
Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu warned of what he
described as increasing "Islamophobia". "This has led to a
complete distortion of Islam and the whole Islamic world has
become a victim of this phenomenon," he said.

Ihsanoglu, a Turk who took over as OIC head in January, also
proposed a plan for restructuring the 36-year-old organization
over the next ten years so it can take a more active role in
international affairs.

"The long periods of crisis that hit the Islamic world has led
to the disintegration of its inner power and the continuation of
crises among the Muslim countries," he said.

Ihsanoglu did not give any details of his plan. But delegates
said he is seeking to remodel the OIC along the lines of the
European Union or United Nations in a bid to give its members
more power. The 57-nation group has had only an advisory role,
with annual summits that often serve as little more than a
discussion forum.

Delegates at Tuesday's meeting said Ihsanoglu was seeking to
convince the OIC to ask for a seat at the UN Security Council for
the Muslim world, and that his proposal focused on issues of
human rights, democracy, women and conflict resolution in Islamic
countries, as well as restructuring the group's secretariat to
give it more powers.

But ministers might not be prepared to endorse all of the
proposals.

"There is a lot of wishful thinking in this paper, the Islamic
countries are not ready to take such a big dose of reform ... not
yet," the delegate said. All delegates spoke on condition of
anonymity because the document has not yet been officially
released.

The OIC, which was founded in 1969, is based in Jiddah, Saudi
Arabia.