Arab News Staff Writer

JEDDAH, 16 April 2004 — The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) aims to hold an emergency ministerial meeting on the Palestinian issue and Iraq on April 22, assistant secretary-general Abdul Aziz Abu Ghosh said yesterday.

“The OIC secretariat in Jeddah was contacted today by Malaysia about holding an emergency meeting at foreign minister level. The proposed date is April 22,” he said.

The meeting, involving a dozen foreign ministers from countries represented in the presidency bureau and various committees, will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Abu Ghosh said.

“The OIC secretariat and Malaysia have started contacts with member states on holding the emergency meeting,” he said.

Malaysia, which currently chairs the 57-member pan-Islamic organization, said earlier yesterday that the OIC would hold an emergency meeting on developments in the Middle East at the request of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Plans for a meeting on May 4 to discuss Iraq and the Palestinian issue would be brought forward in view of the major policy shift announced by US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told the official Bernama news agency.

“We want to organize the meeting earlier because we now feel the urgency of the new development,” Syed Hamid said.

Bush, breaking with a decades-old US policy, stated after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday that Israel could keep some Arab land captured in the 1967 war.

The OIC ministers are also expected to discuss the escalating violence in Iraq.

Students Protest

Reports from the Yemeni capital said about 5,000 high school students marched through Sanaa yesterday denouncing US military operations in Iraq and Washington’s support for Israel.

The students poured out from schools into the Tahrir Square in downtown Sanaa shouting “Death to America ... Death to Israel.”

Waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags, protesters carried placards denouncing the “genocide war” in Iraq and demanding the withdrawal of coalition forces from the country.

“Yes to Iraq’s unity ... No to occupation,” read one banner. Others read, “America is committing a genocide in Fallujah” and “Withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq is the request of all Arabs.”

Security forces prevented protestors from reaching the US Embassy. The march was led by politicians from the ruling General People’s Congress party and opposition parties. In a statement read to the crowd, Yemeni political parties hailed the “steadfastness of the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples and their legitimate resistance against occupation.”

Anti-US sentiment has been intensifying in the Middle East amid mounting insurgency in Iraq.