CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak, speaking to the firstever gathering of the Arab Parliament, assured its members Tuesday that solidarity would enable the Arab world to successfully confront the challenges it faces. "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 president said. The Arab world s first regional parliament held its inaugural meeting in Cairo yesterday but officials say it could be many years before the new institution gains enough clout to influence events in the region. 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 addressed by Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Mubarak. At the March Arab summit in Algeria leaders recommended the establishment of an unelected consultative body for the Arab League as part of a package of reforms for the 60-year-old Cairo-based organization. Mubarak told the lawmakers that 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 and will remain, despite all the challenges and the difficulties, the home for all the Arabs and an umbrella for the joint Arab action. The Interim Arab Parliament will sit for five years until a permanent parliament is elected. Both the interim body and the permanent legislature will be based in Damascus and will have 88 deputies, four from each Arab country, including the Palestinian Authority. 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 a stronger and more effective institution. 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. 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. Mubarak called the inaugural session "a historical occasion which opens new horizons for joint Arab action . "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, one official said. 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 Arab League spokesman Alaa Rushdi. At the opening session the parliamentarians unanimously elected Mohammed Jassim Al-Saqar, head of the foreign relations committee of the Kuwait parliament, as their first speaker. Agencies
