When I decided to publish my memoirs, from which two books have been written, I committed myself to three obligations that I deemed politically and morally necessary.
In a world filled with conflicting stories and contrasting narratives, these commitments were important for my memoirs to move away from problems that have been known to face similar works by leaders, politicians, intellectuals, and cultural figures.
The first of these commitments was related to the need for any narration of political facts to be backed by official sources and conclusive evidence. The second was ensuring a clear separation between personal impressions and analysis on the one hand and verified facts on the other. The third and final commitment was for my notes to be loyal to truth-telling and national interest.
Fulfilling those obligations drove me to entail the assistance of a professional journalist, Khaled Abu Bakr, not only to edit material, but also to strive to document facts from original sources as appropriate.
With the esteemed Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper releasing successive excerpts from my memoir’s second book, which was recently published by Dar El-Shorouk under the title “The Years of the Arab League,” I read a comment written by the former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Al-Hadithi and posted on the newspaper's website on December 13.
I deemed it necessary to respond to his comment, clarify matters, and confirm the accuracy of the facts published in the book.
To begin with, the facts that Al-Hadithi targeted in his commentary on my meeting with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on March 19, 2002, were not extracted from memory. They were recorded in the minutes of the official meeting.
Abu Bakr had obtained a copy of the minutes from the late Ambassador Ahmed ben Helli, who had served as deputy secretary-general of the Arab League in 2016.
Since the official report used abstract technical language in describing what happened during the visit and the atmosphere that engulfed the meeting, Abu Bakr also procured an audio recording from Helli.
The recording covers the atmosphere of the meeting, the tone in which I spoke with the then Iraqi president and some other details that were not mentioned in the minutes of the session. It is important to me that Asharq Al-Awsat publishes this recording.
Together, the minutes of the meeting and the recorded audio testimony of Helli, which he made about five years after I left the helm of the Arab League, confirm the validity of all the facts mentioned in the book regarding the meeting and subsequent developments in the Iraq crisis. They leave no room for doubt about the accuracy and coherence of the memoir.
Amr Moussa is the former Secretary-General of the Arab League and former Egyptian Foreign Minister
