Arabs want more than gimmicks from talks: Moussa

By Jonathan Wright and Alaa Shahine

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League said on Tuesday Arab governments wanted more than gimmicks from an Arab-Israeli peace conference and hoped the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region would speed preparations.

"The conference should not be just one of those meetings for a handshake and a final communique that reflects general positions. We need specifics," Secretary-General Amr Moussa told Reuters in an interview at the league's Cairo headquarters.

"This time we are serious. This time if it is only gimmicks, we are not interested ... There is determination within the Arab group not to be taken lightly or taken for granted."

Moussa, whose organization represents the consensus of all 22 Arab governments, is traveling to New York on Thursday for meetings on the sidelines of the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly, including preparations of the conference.

U.S. President George W. Bush proposed the meeting in July but the United States has given few details of what it expects from it. U.S. officials are trying to lower expectations and have shifted attention to preparatory bilateral meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Saudi Arabia has hinted that it might not attend and Moussa quoted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying he was not interested in a meeting without substance.

Aides to Abbas say that his Fatah movement is pressing him to skip the peace conference unless achievements are assured.

Moussa said: "There are no preparations, nothing about the participants, nothing about the agenda, nothing about the outcome so we cannot really talk about the international conference as if we are in the stage of serious preparation.

"So I hope that when Secretary Rice comes today and discusses with both Abu Mazen (Abbas) and (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert, the preparations will start."

INACTIVITY

Arab diplomats have contrasted U.S. diplomacy over the past two months with U.S. diplomacy for the last big Middle East peace conference, in Madrid in 1991, which took many months of work by Secretary of State James Baker to prepare.

They say the aim might be to create the illusion of movement towards Middle East peace, but without tackling the most difficult points of contention, such as borders and Jerusalem.

The Egyptian government, which is friendly towards the United States, has faulted U.S. diplomacy publicly for inactivity during the preparatory period.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said last week his country had yet to see any major U.S. effort to prepare for the conference in November.

"Maybe the American administration and the secretary of state (Rice) will launch that effort in the few weeks to come. But for the time being we haven't seen yet that kind of a major activity," Aboul Gheit said.