Members want OIC to be more active

ASTANA. July 1. KAZINFORM The three-day annual Council of Foreign Ministers meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation ended with a sense of optimism and new direction among the delegations.

According to Arab News, the deliberations in the Kazakh capital were frank and honest and sometimes critical. Minister after minister called for a more action-oriented OIC as opposed to it being an issuer of nonbinding resolutions, and there were subtle hints that the common folk of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya had been far more effective than the combined might of the OIC member states.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said the OIC needed to go beyond rhetoric and redefine, reinvent and transform itself in the context of the realities and challenges facing the Ummah.

"Are we so helpless that others are able to influence and dictate our decision-making? We need to build on our strengths and abundant resources to raise OIC to be the voice it should be for the Muslim world," Anifah said.

He said the OIC needed to transform itself into a vibrant action-oriented organization by implementing more practical, workable and doable projects and initiatives toward achieving tangible results.

"The recent turn of events in the Muslim region and other parts of the world had also served as a wake-up call for all countries and leaders to be mindful of the current geopolitical changes and on the need to re-evaluate, reassess and reinvent while exercising change."

Kazakhstan has emerged as a new Muslim nation that has the capacity to lead from the front.

"Its excellent organization of the meeting and its proposals of promoting Islamic banking are worth applauding," said Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. "They have shown that they can do it and more importantly they are very strategically situated. Theirs is a burgeoning economy, and what we have seen here in Astana is mind-boggling. We all knew about Islam in Central Asia but the organization of the meeting here will reconnect the Muslim Ummah back with this glorious region."

"You have been excellent hosts, generous hosts," Ihsanoglu told Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov. "Your organization was perfect and highly successful. We all enjoyed and appreciated the proposals and sentiments expressed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He is the founder of a great nation. You have created miracles in just 20 years and have become a role model for nations around the world and specifically Muslim nations."

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