Jordan Islamists blast Olmert's Arab-Israeli summit proposal

Apr 3, 2007, 18:35 GMT

Amman - Jordan's largest political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), Tuesday condemned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's proposal for holding an Arab-Israeli summit as a 'new trick' aimed at a 'free of charge' normalization with Arab states.

'Olmert's call is nothing more than a new trick designed to push the Arabs into the tunnel of settlement and normalization,' IAF Secretary General Zaki Bani Ershaid said in a statement.

He was reacting to comments made at a joint press conference with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Jerusalem on Sunday in which Olmert expressed readiness to attend a meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and other 'moderate Arab leaders' to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative issued by the Arab summit in Riyadh last week.

Bani Ershaid warned Arab leaders against 'sliding into the slope of normalization with the Zionist enemy free of charge.'

He also criticized the Arab summit's formation of a panel to get into touch with Israel and said the step was 'tantamount to succumbing to the US-Zionist conditions.'

The IAF, the political arm of the influential Muslim Brotherhood movement, leads a coalition of 14 opposition parties and 16 trade unions in a campaign designed to derail any normalization steps with Israel, with which Jordan concluded a peace treaty in 1994.