DAKAR 13-14 March 2008 Senegal hosts 11th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference

News about an anticipated trade system for the body and an array of challenges await the leaders of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference when they meet in Senegal. The challenges include preventing the breakup of Iraq, a lagging science project, Israel, and the fighting in Sudan, Somalia and other predominantly Muslim countries.

OIC summits are difficult to schedule, and this one has been postponed twice. Advance negotiations are often needed so leaders at odds with other leaders can be coaxed to the same table. They have managed to set aside their differences to agree on a target date of 1 Jan 2009 for the establishment of the Trade Preferential System among the OIC countries (TPS-OIC), a project that has been on the OIC agenda for more than 25 years. It's a step on the way to the goal of increasing the intra-OIC trade to 20 per cent.

In September OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu strongly condemned talk in the United States Senate about dividing Iraq into three small states. He stressed that no one has the right to decide the destiny of a country except its people, and called for the need to insist on Iraq’s unity "and preserve its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity."

At the extraordinary OIC summit in Dec 2005 the leaders adopted a plan to boost science and research and development across member states. At a conference in September about the project, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi complained it has not been able to move past the preparatory stage since its adoption.

Ali Abdel Gadir Ali, deputy director general of Kuwait-based Arab Planning Institute, called upon each Muslim country to reform their educational institutions and spend 1 per cent of gross domestic product on research and development. Average spending in OIC countries is 0.38 per cent compared to an average of 2.3 per cent in the rest of the world, he says. One study found that between 1995 and 2005 OIC states contributed just 2.5 per cent of articles in peer-reviewed journals, and 34 OIC countries published 10 papers a year or less.

OIC summits devote significant time to condemning Israel and making resolutions meant to halt what they term Israeli agression and grabs of Palestinian land, and this one is unlikely to be an exception. The Israeli-Palestinian question remains an ever-present aggravation for the OIC because the body has not been able to find the solidarity it needs on the issue of Israel to become an influential player in the so-called "peace process."

Darfur in Sudan and in Somalia and other conflict zones in the Islamic world look set to remain OIC challenges well past the March summit. OIC foreign ministers met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September, without finding ways to lessen the bloodshed.

RELATED READING:

OIC
http://www.oic-oci.org/

Regional power imbalance in Israel's favor (Kuwait News Agency 2 Oct 2007)
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1024656