CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 96

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA
ed that the initiative of Arab activism regarding that issue belonged to
Cairo, which once again tried to emphasize its special role in the matters
related to the Arab world.
Thus, at the initiative of Egypt, on May 22, 2004, the concept for
“modernization” of the Arab world was presented at the Arab League
summit in Tunisia. 24
The concept for reforms aimed at the so-called “modernization” of
the Arab world basically included the following provisions 25 : the reforms
in the Arab countries should be carried out on the initiative of the Arab
community, namely from the inside of each Arab country and not being
imposed by external factors; the reform process should proceed in phases
not to shatter the relative security and stability of the region; the reforms
should tend to protect the interests of the region and not the political aspi-
rations of diff erent forces; the immediate precondition for the successful
realization of reforms is the Arab-Israeli confl ict settlement; during the
reform process it is necessary to take into consideration the peculiarities
of development of each Arab country,excluding the implementation of
one common approach towards them; the reforms should not create fertile
soil for the activation of various religious and political movements.
Despite the fact that the conceptual provisions of the so-called “re-
forms” of the Arab world initiated by Egypt did not completely refl ect all
the real problems those countries had and even led to skepticism among
some of the summit participants, however, they were rather realistic and
targeted:
It is worth mentioning that the lack of solidarity between the Arab
states on various issues and the inability to act jointly further complicated
the existing problems therewith creating a fertile ground for intervention
by external forces.
The proposal made by President of Egypt Mubarak on setting up a
special commission for implementation of the Arabic “reforms” concept
was rejected by some of the countries having skeptic stance towards the
Arab concept at the Arab League summit in Tunisia. 26
To be fair, it should be noted that the Arab concept of the so-called
“reforms” of the Arab world was condemned to failure from the very be-
ginning: the reform of the political and economic systems of the Arab
24
25
26
Ibid.
Ibid.
The fact that only thirteen out of thetwenty-two Arab countries were participating in the
above mentioned session, already approved the failure of that meeting. It should be not-
ed that only seven Arab countries participated in the fi nal meeting of the League. The fi rst
among the Arab leaders who left the session was Mubarak, whose proposal had been reject-
ed.
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