Various other messages were sent on the occasion and were delivered at the meeting, including those from the President of Colombia, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement; the Foreign Minister of Indonesia, on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference; the President of Zimbabwe, on behalf of the Organization of African Unity; and by the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States. As the meeting coincided with the annual U.N. North American Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Symposium on the Question of Palestine, many NGO representatives were also in attendance.

• African Summit: The 33^rd Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was held in Harare, Zimbabwe from 2 to 4 June 1997, and was attended by President Arafat, who met bilaterally with a number of African heads of state and government at the Summit. Palestine maintains observer status in the OAU, and the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East are permanent items on the agenda of the OAU's Council of Ministers. The final report of the Summit reaffirmed consistent African support for the Palestinian people and a just solution to the question of Palestine, and further called for "the initiation of all possible measures to ensure Israel's adherence to the terms of reference of the Madrid Conference and the principle of land for peace and its full implementation of all the agreements and commitments entered into by the parties concerned during the peace talks."

• The U.S. Congress and Jerusalem: Defying international law and intervening in sensitive and complex issues at this difficult stage in the negotiations of the peace process and, in some cases, siding against their own citizens, several U.S. Congress members have made recent attempts to establish new facts with regard to the status of Jerusalem. One example of such dangerous undertakings is a recent resolution (non-binding) introduced in Congress "celebrating the 30^th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem" and reaffirming Congress' commitment that Jerusalem remain an undivided city. Another such attempt has been the introduction of a bill (H.R. 1298) in the House of Representatives which would require the State Department to list "Jerusalem, Israel" as the place of birth of American citizens born in Jerusalem, rather than the listing "Jerusalem", which has been customarily used. Both the resolution and the bill ignore the fact that the government of the United States does not recognize the illegal, de facto Israeli annexation of Occupied East Jerusalem and, moreover, that the entire international community has never recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and maintains that East Jerusalem remains an integral part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.