By Xinhua
Damascus : Arab League (AL) Secretary General Amr Moussa on Saturday called for convening a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in mid 2008 to evaluate the Arab-Israeli peace talks.
Addressing the opening session of the 20th Arab Summit, Moussa said Arab foreign ministers should meet in the middle of the year again to determine a direction the Arab states should take in the peace process with Israel.
He warned that Arabs may have to take “painful positions” if no progress was made by then.
The summit of the 22-member pan-Arab bloc started at 11:35 a.m.(0935 GMT) at the Palace of Umayyad in southern suburb of Damascus, with only 11 heads of state of Arab countries, including President Bashar al-Assad of host country Syria, the rotating chairman, showing up at the gathering.
Arab summit is an annual event, which was contrived to bringing together the heads of states of all the Arab countries to discuss regional affairs.