CAIRO,
October 24 (IslamOnline & New Agencies) - Arab League head Amr Mussa
said Thursday, October 24, he would make an "urgent" visit to
Libya, hours after Tripoli announced it intended to pull out of the
22-member pan-Arab grouping.
Libya
had told the Arab League earlier Thursday that it intends to pull out,
an official at the African Unity ministry said, Agence France-Presse
(AFP) reported.
It
is not the first time that Libyan President Moamer Kadhafi has
threatened to pull out of the pan-Arab grouping. On previous occasions
it was because the League had failed the Palestinians in their struggle
against Israeli occupation.
"Libya
officially informed the Arab League of its intention to withdraw from
that organization," the AU official told AFP, without giving the
reasons for the decision.
The
official said Libya’s representative at the Cairo-based organization,
Abdul-Monem al-Honi, had sent a note to Hisham Badr, Arab league
Secretary General Amr Mussa's chief of staff, to inform him of the
decision.
But
a League's spokesman said the organization had not received the Libyan
note.
"The
Arab League has until now received no official request from Libya to
withdraw from the organization," Hisham Yusef told reporters.
That
was echoed by the Arab League's deputy secretary general, Said Kemal,
who said, "We have received nothing."
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Kadhafi
has more than once threatened to pull out over the Arab League’s
defeatist attitude towards Palestine
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The
Libyan leadership has more than once threatened to quit the Arab League
over the Palestinian issue.
In
March, Kadhafi called on his country's parliament to examine Libya's
possible pullout over the League’s failure to take any concrete steps
to help the Palestinian people in their quest for an independent state.
That
prompted an urgent visit to Libya by Moussa to calm the waters.
Libya
also considered quitting the League in 1998 because of the
"defeatist" attitude of Arab states towards the sanctions
imposed on Tripoli over the Lockerbie airliner bombing.
It
was at this time that the Libyan leader decided to focus on building
relations with non-Arab African countries, but chose to stay after a
visit by Moussa’s predecessor, Esmat Abdel-Meguid.
Kadhafi
has also on occasions harshly criticized the Arab League.
