Just to show that not everything about the Middle East is grim these days:
Yesterday Colonel Qadhafi of Libya invited Jews and Christians to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He emphasized that Jews and Christians have the right to do the Haj. Brother Mu'ammar should tell that to the custodians of the shrines, but I doubt that they would issue the required visas. I also doubt that there will be many takers- well, maybe the Pope is curious about exotic places. Just imagine, a bunch of nattily-dressed Hasidim circumambulating the Ka'aba for the first time in perhaps fifteen centuries. (Did they have Hasidim in those old days?) Oy Vey.
As usual, there is a method to the Colonel's seeming madness. He told a bunch of (nervous?) African leaders in Timbuktu (Mali) that Mecca should be a "meeting place for all followers of the three heavenly faiths, including Christians and Jews". The Libyan leader noted that the Saudi rulers call W (Bush, that is) a friend, yet they would not allow him to visit Mecca, because they not-so-secretly consider him an impure heathen. So, now we know why W and Abdullah look so tense, even while holding hands in Crawford.
There is often a misunderstood logic to these outbursts by the Colonel. But this time he ruined the whole thing by asserting that within a few decades Europe will become Moslem. I though Old Europe was becoming more atheist (BTW: is this a half-victory for the Communists?)
In Cairo, the Secretary General of the Arab League met with the leader of an opposition (Sunni) Iraqi pary. I wonder how many Iraqi opposition leaders he met with when Saddam was ruling the roost?
Iraq coycotted an Arab Foreign Ministers meeting in Cairo in protest over Egyptian President Mubarak's comments about sectarian (Shi'a) issues (see my last report). The Egyptian state-controlled press tried to diffuse the issue by saying that he meant only the Shi'as in Iraq, not in the other Gulf states!!!
How many feet do these people have?- Don't you usually need to take one of them out before you can put another back in?
Cheers
Mohammed
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