UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Thursday condemned Israel's attacks on Palestinian civilians in a speech to a summit of Muslim leaders here as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in Arab East Jerusalem by banning the building of Palestinian homes and cutting the city off from the occupied West Bank. Ban said Israel had employed “inappropriate and disproportionate use of force” in its renewed attacks on the Palestinian territories and called for an immediate ceasefire by both sides. Highlighting the deaths of women and children in the Israeli attacks he said, “I condemn these acts and call on Israel to cease them” in his speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit. Abbas told the summit of the 57-nation OIC, being held in Senegal's capital Dakar, the success of US-brokered peace talks depended on Israel showing willingness to live up to the spirit of the process. “Our people in the city (Jerusalem) are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions such as imposing heavy taxes, banning construction and closing Palestinian institutions in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall,” Abbas said. Leaders of the world's biggest Muslim body opened talks Thursday to tackle difficult issues from poverty to hostility toward Islam. Members of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) convened in the Senegalese capital Dakar for a two-day meeting to overhaul its charter. OIC officials hope a revision of the charter can assign the group a more active role in fighting poverty and terrorism. “It's up to the heads of state to make the decision,” Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade told the opening ceremony of the summit. “We are on the point of adopting the charter and we hope this adoption will come today.” The charter discussions include calls for more aid from the OIC's members to its poorest states, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Another key change would allow the group to take decisions by a two-thirds majority, instead of requiring unanimity – difficult to achieve in a large body with such cultural and political divisions, spanning Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The meeting, however, was due to throw its weight behind the democratic government in Iraq, denouncing terrorist threats. __
