Euro-Med Movement

// 15.10.2006

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI TO VISIT MALTA

Mustafa Barghouti, one of the candidates in the Palestinian presidential elections of January, 2005, will be visiting Malta in the coming days.

Dr Barghouti is a guest of the Euro-Med Movement following an invitation by the general co-ordinator of the movement and Labour international secretary Joe Mifsud.

Dr Barghouti is expected to address the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. He will also participate in a seminar Transforming Conflict in the Mediterranean Region as part of the EU programme YOUTH.

Dr Barghouti, who set up Mubadara, a political formation whose name means National Palestinian Initiative, is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Mubadara is an Opposition formation which campaigns for democratic reforms. He has been active in the Palestinian liberation movement since the 1970s and his activism on behalf of his homeland has led him into trouble with the Israeli security forces.

In 1991, Dr Barghouti took part in the Madrid conference that paved the way for peace deals between the Palestinians and Israel.

Dr Barghouti also set up the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees in the 1970s and is still its president. Today the organisation gives medical services to about one million Palestinians in 435 communities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Dr Barghouti is also one of the leading architects of the Palestinian national unity government and is tipped to be the minister of health when it is eventually formed.

During the presidential elections, Dr Barghouti gained a respectable 19.8 per cent of the vote and emerged as a key figure in the Palestinian political landscape.