MBOLO CAMEROON IMMOBILIER

FIFA president Sepp Blatter attends a press conference following an executive meeting of the football's world governing body at the Home of FIFA on March 21, 2014 in Zurich. Photo by Michael Buholzer/AFP/Getty Images.


By Keir Radnedge, Chairman AIPS Football Commission
LONDON, March 22, 2014 - FIFA president Sepp Blatter is heading back to Israel and Palestine in May in the hope of securing enough progress to stave off trouble at Congress in Sao Paulo in June.

Since 2011 Blatter has shuttled to and fro in pursuit of a working relationship between the two sides to ease problems over of freedom of movement for players and officials in and out of the West Bank.

The current negotiating spiral has been undertaken with assistance from the two relevant confederations from Europe (UEFA of which Israel is a member) and Asian (AFC for Palestine).

Tensions increased earlier this year when two teenage Palestinians – Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17 – were maimed after being shot by Israeli security forces while returning home from training.

Jawhar was shot eleven times in his feet, Adam was shot once in each foot.

At FIFA Congress in Mauritius last year Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestine football association, expressed his anger at a lack of progress.

He warned that, without significant progress from Tel-Aviv, he would ask congress this year to expel Israel from membership of FIFA.

Blatter, seeking to head off a damaging split on the eve of the World Cup finals, emerged from his latest executive committee meeting to explain his hopes for a step forward.

He said: “The last meeting between the two parties was in February in Zurich. We have nominated a liaison officer for both Israel abd Palestine and it works – not perfectly but it works.

“They announce, three weeks in advance, when a team or players will come [to Palestine] and they give a list of players and coaches and then Israel can have a look. There have been one or two incidents but, with good understanding, it works.”

Blatter acknowledged that “the international situation is not very comfortable.”

Hence he and representatives of UEFA and AFC would return to the region in May to meet political leaders from both sides including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Blatter added: “We hope that at congress in Sao Paulo in June we can announce that the two national associations could sign a kind of memorandum of understanding.”

On the Qatar workers’ rights issue, FIFA is starting to lose patience with the Gulf state’s tardy response to concerns over workers’ rights in the 2022 World Cup host nation.

This has become clear both from executive committee heavyweight Theo Zwanziger and from sources close to the former German federation president who is leading the world federation’s ‘Qatar action’ process.

Zwanziger’s summary after this week’s exco meeting contrasted starkly with the pacifying messages emanating locally in the Middle East from Asian confederation president Sheikh bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa from Bahrain.

He said: “We are getting regular letters and reports on what they are doing and what action they have started and we will do our part. In the next fortnight there will be visits by political institutions in Qatar and I have told them we want honest reports.

“Only with clean and clear facts can you continue with the talks.”

Other exco issues:

* FIFA made a surplus of $72m and expanded its reserves to $1.432bn according to the financial report for 2013;

* the reform issues of age limit and term limits were referred to congress in Sao Paulo in June;

* significant progress was expected in the next week from World Cup problem venues of Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre; and

* Blatter reiterated FIFA’s opposition to any form of technology on the pitch apart from goal-line systems; TV evidence could be used to review disciplinary issues;

* Congress will be recommended to re-co-opt Moya Dodd and Sonia Bien-Aime to the FIFA exco for one further year.