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CNN Live Today

Arab Summit Begins Without Key Members

Aired March 27, 2002 - 10:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Up first on CNN, the Arab summit and its volatile start. Our Beirut bureau chief, Brent Sadler, is there and joins us live -- Brent, you are there, but many top leaders in the Arab world are not.

BRENT SADLER, CNN BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF: Yes, indeed, Daryn. There is no presence here of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, no King Abdullah of Jordan, significantly of course, no Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinians. He was expected to give a live teleconference speech to the assembled heads of states that are here. That didn't happen either, because Lebanon blocked what had been a prearranged signal from Ramallah, from the West Bank headquarters of Mr. Arafat here to the Lebanese capital.

And that has thrown the whole proceedings here into a state of disarray over the past few hours, leading to an immediate reaction from the Palestinian delegation. They walked out at the end of the first session, and we understand the Palestinian delegation here is not going to return to the summit at this stage.

An effort to broker some sort of compromise appears not to have worked. The Lebanese prime minister himself, Rafik Hariri, tried to negotiate a compromise. That does not seem to have worked. At the Lebanese presidential palace, Emile Lahoud, his people telling CNN that the signal was blocked, because they were concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might somehow have been able to hijack the signal into the conference, and that the picture of Mr. Sharon could have been beamed into here into the conference center behind me in Beirut, rather than the image of Yasser Arafat.

But of course, we have no full explanation of what has been going on behind the scenes, but certainly that has been overshadowing the fact, of course, that the Saudi initiative, the peace initiative, was indeed officially launched.

Now, Yasser Arafat was seen on al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite TV station, and he was talking about life of Palestinians under what he said was Israeli siege. Mr. Arafat once again did say that he was making efforts to try and bring about from his side a durable cease- fire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YASSER ARAFAT, PRES., PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (through translator): Despite the fact that our demand was not -- that the demand was to have quiet for only one week. Our efforts have been appreciated by our friends, by the Americans, by the Europeans, by the United Nations, but the Israeli government insisted on believing that it is capable of breaking the will of our Palestinian people, and therefore has been always disrupting all efforts to calm things down by means of political escalation and imposing further sieges and closures in order to create more obstacles that would prevent moving into political negotiations to reach a settlement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SADLER: So no Palestinian delegation at this crucial summit, which was supposed to rally Arab leaders around that Saudi initiative peace proposal that has been launched and has not been adapted. We understand there is still some work to do on that, and certainly this issue of the speech of Mr. Arafat to Arab leaders certainly dominating the news from here right now -- back to you, Daryn.

KAGAN: That explanation, Brent, is one of the oddest I have heard in a long time. What about the other leaders, Hosni Mubarak and Jordan King Abdullah, why aren't they there?

SADLER: Well, there was concern that in both those capitals that after the Arafat issue of him not being allowed to travel from Ramallah because of Israeli-imposed conditions by Ariel Sharon, that would create the wrong kind of circumstances for them to attend. We have had no real explanations apart from domestic commitments as far as Mr. Mubarak is concerned, and possibly a little bit of flu as far as the Jordanian monarch is concerned.

But really frankly, on the ground here, no one really is giving full explanations, full analysis, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) hear later why those two key Middle East peacemakers did not come at this crucial summit, which has now really degenerated into some disarray, because of this whole controversy now raging over the tele-appearance live of Mr. Arafat that didn't happen, because of it being blocked by the Lebanese president -- back to you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Brent Sadler in Beirut -- Brent, thank you very much.

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