Saudi Arabia: OIC suspends Syria membership, will take Rohingya case to UN 16-08-2012 MAKKAH, (Arab News and Agencies): The Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria’s membership early on Thursday at a summit of Muslim leaders in Makkah, citing President Bashar Assad’s violent suppression of the Syrian revolt. In a closing statement, the OIC also decided to take to the United Nations the issue of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingyas, displaced by deadly sectarian violence. It described as a “crime against humanity” the Myanmar government’s handling of minority Muslims and reiterated support for the Palestinians.
he statement by the 57-nation group said: “The conference decides to suspend the Syrian Arab Republic membership in the OIC and all its subsidiary organs, specialized and affiliated institutions.” The move had been approved on Monday at a preliminary meeting of OIC foreign ministers and was agreed on the summit’s second night despite opposition from Iran. The two-day emergency solidarity summit was held on Tuesday and Wednesday in the holy city of Makkah. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah presided over the meeting, attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose country has openly criticized the push to suspend Syria. Participants had agreed on “the need to end immediately the acts of violence in Syria and to suspend that country from the OIC.” The final statement said there had been “deep concern at the massacres and inhuman acts suffered by the Syrian people.”
OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told a news conference the decision sent “a strong message from the Muslim world to the Syrian regime.” “This world can no longer accept a regime that massacres its people using planes, tanks and heavy artillery,” he added. It was “also a message to the international community stating that the Muslim world backs a peaceful solution (in Syria), wants an end to the bloodshed and refuses to let the problem degenerate into a religious conflict and spill over” into the wider region, Ihsanoglu said. The emergency summit of the world’s largest Islamic bloc opened late Tuesday with the suspension proposal put forward by a preparatory meeting of foreign ministers, a symbolic attempt to pile pressure on Damascus over its deadly crackdown on a 17-month uprising. The move by the OIC, which represents 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, is aimed at further isolating Assad’s embattled regime.
The meeting called for the “immediate implementation of the transitional peace plan and the development of a peaceful mechanism that would allow building a new Syrian state based on pluralism, democratic and civilian system.” It also urged the UN Security Council to “assume fully its responsibility by stopping the ongoing violence and bloodshed in Syria and finding a peaceful and lasting solution to the Syrian crisis.” The participants also stressed “the principal responsibility of the Syrian government for the continuation of violence and bloodshed.” Algeria, Pakistan and Kazakhstan had called for the final statement of the summit, to which Damascus was not invited, to also pin blame on the armed opposition for the bloodshed in Syria, according to informed sources at the summit. And Egypt’s President Muhammad Mursi proposed the formation of a committee grouping his country with key players Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to try to find a settlement to the Syrian conflict, a delegate had said.
Source: The Muslim News
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