Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa justified his decision to stay in the meeting which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of on the sidelines of the Global Economic Forum late last month. Speaking on Thursday evening to Al-Jazeera's Cairo bureau chief Hussein Abdel Ghani, he said: "I didn't withdraw with Erdogan because I know his walkout was not to protest at Peres but to reject the way the meeting had been organized. "The opportunity to present an Arabic viewpoint in confronting Israeli slanders and lies must not be missed" he added. He added that these international meetings are very important to launch the Arab Initiative, reject Israel's excuses and uncover its lies in front of the world. He also pointed out that the Israeli president looked perturbed by his and Erdogan's interventions before the Prime Minister stormed out of the meeting. On January 29, Erdogan withdrew from a session at the Davos Economic Forum devoted to discussing the situation in Gaza. He did so to protest at the way the meeting had been organized, as he thought that the moderator, Washington Post's journalist David Ignatius, had not given him enough time to reply to the Israeli President. Ignatius gave Peres 25 minutes to defend Israel's point of view on the war in Gaza, while he gave only 12 to Erdogan to defend Turkey's.
