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'There is no honour in seeing Arabs rush towards normalisation during its presidency,' Maliki said [File: Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters] Palestine was meant to chair Arab League meetings for next six months, but FM Riyad al-Maliki has declined the position. Palestine has quit its current chairmanship of Arab League meetings, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Tuesday, condemning as dishonourable any Arab agreement to establish formal ties with Israel. Palestinians see the deals that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed with Israel in Washington a week ago as a betrayal of their cause and a blow to their quest for...

Arab foreign ministers on Sunday demanded that the United States rescind President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, calling it a “grave” development that puts Washington on the same side as “occupation” and the violation of international law. In a resolution long on rhetoric but short on concrete actions, the ministers also called for the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution condemning Trump’s decision, but acknowledged that Washington would most likely veto it. If the U.S. vetoes the resolution, the Arabs would seek a similar resolution in the U.N. General Assembly, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki...

<p>Egypt's foreign minister said at the weekend the break-up of Sudan looked inevitable because northern and southern officials had made no real effort to keep the country united.</p> <p>A referendum on independence for South Sudan, promised under a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended decades of civil war, is set for January 11, but preparations are falling behind schedule.</p>

An Egyptian foreign service official's comment about President Obama is turning into a sensation among bloggers for its claim that the American leader claims to be Muslim. Obama's religiosity has been the subject of discussion since before he was elected and his Chicago-area pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, delivered a "God d--- America" sermon that was caught on video. Obama later claimed to be a Muslim in a television interview where the interviewer corrected his "misstatement" and he has referenced the Muslim heritage in America's past several times. Now the heat on the issue is being turned up because of a...

Obama has apparently confirmed what many have suspected since the presidential campaign: that he is a Muslim, not a “committed Christian,” as he professed during the presidential campaign. The periodical Israel Today has reported that in a private meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Obama told Gheit that he is a Muslim. The exchange was aired on Nile TV.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had a one-on-one meeting with Obama, in which President Obama told him that he was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the stepson of Muslim stepfather, that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.