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American Morning

Yasser Arafat Addresses Arab Summit Decision

Aired March 27, 2002 - 08:25   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We need to go to Beirut, where Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, is now addressing Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite network. These are his first public remarks since he decided not to go to the Arab League summit in Beirut because of the travel conditions which were laid down by Israel.

He is expected to address the full summit a little bit later by satellite, as well.

Let's listen now very briefly here.

YASSER ARAFAT, PRESIDENT, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY: ... that I signed with my late partner, Yitzhak Rabin, who paid with his life the price for this peace. Here I would like to note, take notice of the participation of clergymen from Jerusalem in this summit that is being convened now in Beirut, the way they did in the Arab summits that were held in Amman, Cairo and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And in the rest of the Islamic summits as well as in the meetings of the Al-Qods (Jerusalem) Committee in Morocco.

I would like to say here that glory to God in heaven, and may peace be on people on earth.

Dear brothers, we are supposed to discuss the situation and the conditions of our Arab nation, to characterize its pains in order to prepare a concentrated effort for an Arab mechanism. Yes, exactly. We would like to know how would an Arab joint action be wide understanding the international changes, the rapid changes on the international arena and while understanding exactly what is now called the post-11th of September world, the world that came after the terror attacks that we have, that we were the first to condemn on New York and Washington.

We are now supposed to put our feet on the map of the new world, with all its complications and sophistications.

We are...

ZAHN: All right, we just wanted to briefly dip into some of the comments Chairman Arafat is making to Al-Jazeera, the Arab network. He is expected to speak in about an hour or so to the full Arab summit in Beirut at a time when there's still speculation the United States, or at least hope on the part of some Bush administration officials, that he will, in fact, leave Ramallah and travel in person to the summit. There is a lot of speculation, too, about how effective the summit will be, not only not having Yasser Arafat there in person, but you also have the King of Jordan, who is not in attendance, and the leader of Egypt, as well.

So, if anything new comes out of these remarks, we will bring them to you live. But Yasser Arafat defending the Palestinian reaction to the 9/11 attacks, saying they acted forcefully while at the same time everybody else knows there were small demonstrations that broke out in favor of the 9/11 attacks. So we'll continue to try to provide some perspective for you here this morning.

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