Arab foreign ministers want Israeli links cut

At an emergency meeting in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers have called upon Arab governments to cut all political contacts with Israel until it halts military action against the Palestinians and lifts the siege of their self-rule enclaves.

Mr Amr Moussa, the former Egyptian foreign minister who took over as Arab League secretary general last week, adopted a predictably tough line. "The attacks against the Palestinians will have to stop. Otherwise we will be acting at the point of the gun, which we totally and utterly reject," he said.

The ministers met on Saturday just 12 hours after Israel mounted F-16 fighter-bomber strikes on Nablus, killing 12 Palestinians, allegedly in retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing which left six Israelis dead. The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, believes the conflict has escalated into the "decisive battle for Palestine."

The decision effectively isolates Israel in the region. Although it also appeared to suspend the Egyptian-Jordanian effort to broker a ceasefire in the eight-month intifada, President Mubarak of Egypt said yesterday: "The initiative is still on the table and we should continue [efforts] to reactivate it".

Since Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab states to have diplomatic relations with Israel, it is significant that the authors of the 12-point proposal put before the ministers were Mr Moussa and the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Mr Abdul Ilah al-Khatib. At the start of the intifada, both Cairo and Amman withdrew their ambassadors from Tel Aviv and they have not returned.

The proposal also called for immediate financial support for the Palestinians, an international force to protect them, an end to Israeli settlement construction and a boycott of goods exported by settlements.

As the ministers met in Cairo, Qatar, current chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, stepped up pressure on the UN Security Council to overcome US objections to a formal discussion of the crisis. Yesterday the Arab press was full of praise for Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the effective ruler of the world's largest oil producer, for protesting at Washington's disengagement from Middle East peacemaking by refusing an invitation to the White House.