Arab states urge U.N. to investigate Israeli-Palestinian clashes

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- The Arab League urged the U.N. Security Council on Sunday to investigate Israel's conduct in the Palestinian-Israeli clashes and bring transgressors to justice.

Arab leaders such as King Abdullah II of Jordan and Foreign Minister Amr Moussa of Egypt warned the bloodshed was wrecking the peace process.

Twenty-nine people have been killed and more than 700 wounded in riots and shootings that began Thursday after the Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, made a political visit to a contested site in east Jerusalem that is holy to both Jews and Muslims.

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting of its 22 ambassadors, the Arab League demanded the Security Council "conduct an international investigation into the horrible crimes against the Palestinian people and try the responsible Israelis before the International Criminal Court."

This U.N. court is due to be set up in The Hague, Netherlands, to deal with crimes against humanity and large-scale abuses of human rights.

The league statement put the blame for the clashes squarely on Israel's shoulders. Israel's police minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has said his government has evidence the fighting was orchestrated by the Palestinian leadership.

The chairman of the league meeting, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, said the consequences for the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would be "very negative."

"We can't see now how the peace process will proceed under the threat of massacres, violations and atrocities committed ... against the Palestinian people," Rabbo said in English.

Jordan's King Abdullah II endorsed that view in a call to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Sunday, Jordan's official Petra news agency reported.

The king "warned of the dangers of such actions on the peace process" and said Jordan "rejected the provocative and unjustified (Israeli) actions," the agency said.

Egypt's Amr Moussa said the clashes would "negatively and gravely affect the peace process."

Some 4,000 Palestinians demonstrated in Jordan in the second of two anti-Israel protests Sunday in Baqaa refugee camp.

"Jihad (holy war) is our way to liberate Jerusalem," the protesters chanted. The demonstrators were affiliated with Muslim fundamentalist groups that oppose peace with Israel. The camp houses Palestinians who were displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars.

The protests spread late Sunday to the Jordanian capital, Amman, where the cry to "liberating Jerusalem" was heard at separate demonstrations by professional associations and Palestinian refugees.

In Syria, two government-controlled newspapers published editorials that appeared to support the fighting. Al-Thawra said the road to peace is found in the lessons of the Palestinian uprising and the success of those who opposed Israel's occupation of south Lebanon, which ended in May.

"The armed struggle should remain in the memory as the sole route to peace," Al-Thawra said.

Al-Baath said the fighting showed the Palestinian rights could not be compromised. "The language of martyrdom is still alive in the spirits."

Similar sentiments were expressed in Cairo by Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Al-Azhar, the most respected religious institution in mainstream Islam.

"What was taken by force can only be returned by force," Tantawi was quoted by Egypt's Middle East News Agency as saying. He was referring to Israel's capturing east Jerusalem and its holy sites in the 1967 Arab-Israel war.

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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