Last update - 00:00 12/07/2007
Visit by Egypt, Jordan FMs won't be an official Arab League mission
By The Associated Press
The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, due to visit Israel later this month, will not be representing the Arab League as previously reported, but rather will represent only their respective countries, Egypt's foreign minister said Thursday.
The announcement was made shortly after the State Department in Washington said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to postpone a visit to the region that had been planned for next week.
The Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers were recently reported to be acting as envoys from the Arab League on their upcoming visit.
This would have been the first such visit to Israel by the Arab League, which has historically been hostile toward it.
But Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said his visit to Israel with his Jordanian counterpart, planned for July 25, would only be on behalf of their respective countries.
"This is not a visit where the Arab League flag will be raised," Aboul Gheit told reporters. "This is a matter of principle."
On Wednesday the head of the 22-nation Arab League, Amr Moussa, also said the two foreign ministers would not be representing the League.
A visit by Arab League officials would have marked an important diplomatic accomplishment for Israel. But many Arab countries considered such a move too hasty until Israel makes a gesture about the Arab peace-for-land plan relaunched by an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia in March.
The offer promises full peace with all Arab nations if Israel withdraws from territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and allows the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israel rejected the plan outright when it was first presented in 2002, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently expressed willingness to discuss it.
Rice delayed her trip so that she can be accompanied to the region at the end of the month by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the State Department said.
Spokesman Sean McCormack said the changes do not connote any reduction in Bush administration commitment to furthering peace between Israel and the Palestinians, or that preoccupation with the Iraq war is crowding out other issues.
U.S. President George W. Bush announced at a news conference on Iraq on Thursday that he was sending Rice and Gates to the Middle East.
Rice last visited Israel and the West Bank in March, when she announced that Olmert and Abbas planned to meet every two weeks - a schedule that the two leaders were unable to meet.
Rice has also canceled a planned visit next week to Congo. She had been scheduled to become the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the volatile and mineral-rich central African nation in a decade.