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Report on the Organization of the Islamic Conference and its Secretary-General
Author: Azhar Ali Khan (He is identified as “a Citizen editorial writer”.)
Source: The Citizen (Ottawa), January 7, 1977, page 7
ORIGINAL TITLE: A tough assignment – ‘Moslem Waldheim’ serves 600 million Muslims
Excerpts:
The first Moslem summit in Morocco in 1969 produced the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Moslem foreign ministers who meet every year tell the organization what to do.
[…]
Perhaps the organization’s greatest achievement so far has been in arranging, in co-operation with the Libyan government, a peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front, which was fighting for a separate homeland in the southern Philippines.
The war has claimed thousands of lives since it started in 1972. The Islamic Conference played an important role in ending it and Philippine President Marcos says its observers will help in the ceasefire arrangements now being made.
It is also doing other work – building universities and hospitals in Africa, assisting Islamic centres with funds or books to improve their education, sports, research, and youth programs – and has plans to expand its activity.
[…]
Under the Islamic Conference’s aegis, an Islamic Development Bank was set up in Jeddah in 1972. The bank receives proposals from Moslem countries for investment and tries to help.
[…]
Projects are being started or assisted in North and South America, Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa. In Canada, assistance is going to the Moslem Students’ Association of the U.S. and Canada and to Islamic centres in Vancouver, Quebec and Windsor.
[…]
Building interest
Assisting him are three assistant secretaries-general, Ambassadors Zafrul Islam Khan of Pakistan and Kacem Zhiri of Morocco and Senator Tevetoghi of Turkey.
Their task is to get Moslem countries seriously interested in making the organization a success. They must attract sufficient funds to implement their plans, get top-flight personnel and arrange co-ordination between far-flung governments. Conference officials travel widely to study conditions of Moslem communities first-hand and to generate interest.
They have only made a beginning – the current annual budget of the solidarity fund, for example, comes to $15 million while the cost of the two proposed universities in Africa exceeds $200 million.
The fact, however that the Islamic foreign ministers turned to a small country for picking the organization’s chief, instead of selecting a heavyweight from an oil-rich one, shows that they want solid work and not mere glitter for their agency. For his part, the soft-spoken, 63-year-old Senegalese seems determine to vindicate their faith in him.
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