Posted 3/19/2003 11:34:00 AM by Ocean Guy
This from MEMRI... it seems the Libyans hold Jacques Chirac in high esteem..

The official paper of the Libyan regime, Al-Jumhuriya, chose to bestow on President Jacques Chirac of France the great honor of "Chirac Al-Ayoubi," after Salah al-Din Al-Ayoubi—known in the West as 'Saladin'- who is considered the greatest Arab military leader for defeating the Crusaders in the Battle of Hittin in the twelfth century.

Chirac a great Arab military leader? Meanwhile our friends, the Saudis, compare this past weekend's meeting in the Azores to Yalta:

The Saudi daily Al-Watan drew historical lessons from the Yalta conference which convened in 1945 "to divide the world according to a new map." Two of the three participants in Yalta, the United States and the United Kingdom, took part in the Azores summit. Spain replaced the Soviet Union as the third party. Al-Watan wrote in its editorial:

"The enormous failure of three 'axis of war countries' to extract a war resolution against Iraq has led them to convene a war council and [make] decisions under the banner of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. It means that the issue does not concern the three countries alone but the entire world. ...This style of managing world crises threatens world security and threatens world equilibrium when three countries make decisions and proceed without paying attention to the entire world and without giving peaceful efforts a greater chance to avoid the dangers of war."

On the other hand, a group of Saudi Islamic scholars issued a Fatwa (religious edict) warning Muslims and their rulers that it was a "deadly sin" to help a U.S.-led war on Iraq.