CAIRO, May 15--At a meeting marked by recrimination between officials from Iraq and Kuwait, the 21-member Arab League elected the Foreign Minister of Egypt as its new secretary general today, formally restoring Cairo's role as a center of Arab diplomacy.
The vote was unanimous, Arab League officials said, suggesting that those countries that opposed Egypt's pro-American policy in the Persian Gulf war to side with Baghdad were now seeking to mend fences with more moderate Arab nations in the wake the Iraqi defeat.
Iraq and Jordan were said by Arab diplomats to have been the last two
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has given no indication who will replace the 68-year-old Mr. Abdel-Meguid as Foreign Minister. Traditionally, Egypt provided the Arab League's most senior officials until its ostracism in 1979 after President Anwar el-Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel. The league's headquarters then moved to Tunis.
Egypt was readmitted to full membership of the Arab League in 1989 after two years of assiduous diplomacy on its behalf by Iraq and Jordan, the same countries that were to oppose it in the gulf crisis.
Mr. Abdel-Meguid, a French-trained lawyer, is one of Egypt's most senior diplomats. He had been Cairo's representative at the United Nations and its ambassador to France, and was appointed Foreign Minister in 1983.
Arab League headquarters moved back to Cairo on Jan. 1 as Egypt led a slender majority of the moderate Arab countries arrayed against Iraq. Baghdad broke relations with Egypt and its Arab allies, but maintains a formal relationship with the league, where it was represented today by Mohammed al-Sahaf, a Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
The Iraqi official pointedly turned his back on the auditorium today as the meeting's chairman, Foreign Minister Salem al-Sabah of Kuwait, condemned the Iraqi invasion last August, terming it aggression.
In response, the Iraqi official revived charges that preceded the invasion--that Kuwait had waged economic war on Iraq by keeping oil prices low and by tapping into Iraqi oilfields on their border. "War is not only tanks and bombs," he said.
Reflecting Baghdad's isolation, none of the officials at the meeting applauded his address.
Alongside the largely ceremonial Arab League meeting, foreign ministers from Egypt, Syria and six Arab gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, met for separate talks here today.
(article accompanied by photograph of Iraqi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed al-Sahaf at the Arab League meeting, captioned:
Mohammed al-Sahaf, an Iraqi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, requesting the floor yesterday at meeting of the Arab League in Cairo to protest Kuwait's condemnation of the Iraqi invasion last August.)
(article accompanied by photograph of Dr. Esmat Abdel-Meguid, captioned:
Esmat Abdel-Meguid, the Foreign Minister of Egypt, after being elected secretary general of the Arab League yesterday.)
(text of May 16, 1991 New York Times article)
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