Uphill struggle for Arab Parliament

CAIRO: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, speaking to the first-ever gathering of the Arab Parliament, assured its members Tuesday that solidarity would enable the Arab world to successfully confront the challenges it faces. The 88 members, four from the parliaments or advisory councils of each Arab League member, met at the league's Cairo headquarters for a session also addressed by Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

The interim parliament has no binding legislative authority and can give its opinion only on matters referred to it by the Arab League council, which represents Arab governments. Based in Syria, it will meet twice a year. But officials say it could be many years before the new institution gains enough clout to influence events in the region.

Mubarak called the inaugural session "a historic occasion which opens new horizons for joint Arab action.

"Our great Arab world, through the unity of its sons, has the means to restore its vitality, to face current challenges and to assume its rightful place in the world," the Egyptian leader said.

Mubarak told the lawmakers democracy and human rights were not "a product of any one culture and were not values that could be mass produced for export. But they are human values and principles shared by all the nations and cultures."

Mubarak defended the Arab League, which many Arabs consider ineffective, saying it had proved its capability to "develop and cope with our changing era and the aspirations of our peoples..."

Moussa said that the creation of the parliament was proof that "development of democracy in the Arab world was underway."

Rawhi Fattouh, speaker of the Palestinian legislature, said the Parliament would be valuable only if it kept an eye on the actions of Arab governments.

"It must be a monitor of Arab executive institutions, but if it is just a union of parliaments then it's not going to be important," he told reporters at the meeting.

Some Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, do not have elected parliaments, so their representatives in the Arab parliament are drawn from appointed advisory councils which have little power. Some of the elected Arab parliaments are dominated by the executive or ruling party and rarely challenge the government.

The concept of the Arab parliament was part of a package of institutional changes promoted by Moussa as a way to make the Arab League stronger and more effective.

But Arab heads of state have not approved other aspects of the package, including an Arab court of justice and an Arab security council to handle regional disputes.

The new interim parliament has five years to draft the arrangements for a permanent Arab parliament.

In one of its first decisions on Tuesday, it chose liberal Kuwaiti Mohammad Jassim al-Saqr as its speaker, said Arab League spokesman Alaa Rushdi. Saqr, who has been head of the Kuwaiti parliament's foreign relations committee, has an initial term of one year, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said.

Arab League officials say they hope the permanent parliament will eventually have teeth, possibly through direct elections similar to those held for the European parliament.

"It's only a start, but the European parliament started small too. It's part of a trend away from an Arab League which exclusively represents governments," was how one official summed it up.

Under Moussa in recent years, the Arab League has increasingly brought civil society groups into discussions.

"We have several regional parliaments - the European Parliament and the African Parliament. The Arab Parliament will be looking at them and their experiences and what they can learn from them," said Rushdi.